Within 20th. Century art, the concept of the ‘normative’ image, as an attribute of things, has been challenged. As a consequence, paintings must now picture the ‘real’ world in other ways, incorporating knowledge and meaning beyond the analogon. Such descriptive representations were revealed as paradigmatic, rather than incontrovertible fact. Dependent on pre-conceived notions of stereotypicality, these descriptive images relied on surface illumination. My thesis explores images of things in the world as culturally inspired and information based. I examine paintings and sculptures of other cultures, such as black African, and other historical periods such as the Medieval, which reveal metonymously the basis for variations in representations of the ‘real’ world. The new enhanced representations which Modern artists created in their work were denigrated as deviant from the absolute ‘normative’ or regarded as distortions for purely mannerist and stylistic reasons. Postmodern research has reassessed them as multiple or extended imagings in whose facture new knowledge and human responses can be incorporated. These new forms of representation can be regarded as theoretical constructs rather than stylised depictions of appearance. In this way referents are transferred through the mind onto objects and vistas in the real world to align with our developed view of the physical world and better our understanding of humanity’s symbiotic relationship with nature.

This thesis is composed of five oil paintings and four synthetic paintings. The works are arranged in a sequence beginning with distant over views of the city and progressing toward more immediate views. Techniques change also, from the suggestive impressionistic mode, a style I explored in my early years of art education, to a studied application of large, solid, simplified shapes of color. In my work, realism is sacrificed for a decorative arrangement of color patterns. From this creative experience I have reached conclusions about art education and my responsibility as an art instructor. Motivation is essential when introducing all art projects. Students presented with interesting background material are more likely to present an acceptable work of art. Critical thinking plays an important role in the teaching of art. I conclude that if the students consider all possible alternatives before making a final decision, there will be a higher degree of artistic quality. A general knowledge of the development of art and its great men is a vital part of art instruction. I feel that a student with an awareness of the past and its influence upon today’s art movements is better equipped to deal with artistic problems or demands. Last, my research has aided me in establishing this educational objective: to involve the students in learning experiences which would cause a deeper understanding of both art media and subject matter.

This creative project started out as initially proposed. During the many long hours of work, the project changed. Many unexpected events made the project more difficult. The original idea was to organize, select, print, market and copywrite eleven years of auto racing negatives.The selection of a print shop was the first problem. The cost of the book was considerable. The result was an inferior printer. A problem in communication was next. Deadlines were given and agreed upon but never were met during the whole project. The failure to meet the deadlines over a extended period of time left no alternative. An agreement was reached with the print shop manager and I began to do the work with the notable exception of the running of the press. This was the major change in the original project.This change led to a more technical approach. The actual involvement with the book was now centered around learning about layouts, signatures, flats, halftones, line than raw talent to be successful. Things like training, copy, cutting and pasting photographs, dot patterns, and making plates for the press. This proved to be a positive learning experience.In closing, there are three main points. The first point is how much the project changed over the course of time. The result of little money, poor communication and the use of a poor quality printer led to the failure of the final product as a marketable book. Point two is that even though the final product is not as planned, the project will continue even beyond the creative project. A final marketable product is the goal and the creative project is just a step in reaching that goal. Lastly, I have developed a new appreciation for what a true artist is. It takes more education, experiences, environment, dedication, money are just a few of the qualities needed. All of these factors and more have been discovered in the making of this book. It has helped me establish new guidelines for what makes a true artist.

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Includes bibliographical references (p. 62-64). / In Camera Lucida Roland Barthes (1980: 64-66), describes the process of looking through his mother's photographs after her death. He weighs up how much of her he recognises in the images he comes across. He evaluates the versions of her that are portrayed and deduces that "none seem to be really 'right':" neither as photographic performances nor as existing recurrences of "the beloved face" that he carries in his psyche. He talks about trying to find her, and achieves only part satisfaction in pinpointing fragments in each image that seem to depict parts of the mother he knows. He concludes that by being partially true, the total representation in each image is false. He suggests that the physical details and direct documentations of his mother's physical self, do not contain the sense of her, as he knows her.

Master of Architecture

This thesis examines images of women shopping in the art of Kenneth Hayes Miller and Reginald Marsh during the 1920s and 1930s. New York City's Fourteenth Street served Kenneth Hayes Miller and Reginald Marsh, respectively, as a location generating the inspiration to study and visually represent its contemporaneity. Of particular interest to this thesis are relationships between developments in shopping and the images of women shopping in and around Fourteenth Street that populate the paintings of Miller and Marsh. Although, as Ellen Todd Wiley has shown, the emerging notion of the New Woman helped to shape female identity at this time, what remains unstudied are dimensions that geographically specific, historical developments in shopping contributed to the construction of female identity which, this thesis argues, Marsh and Miller related to, by locating in, the department store and bargain store.

Indigenous communities, like the Bushmen of the Southern Kalahari, always attract visitors who 'go there' to experience the 'life out there'. Travelling in their 4x4s, these visitors also bring cameras and take pictures of their interactions with subject communities as evidence of 'having been there'. For academics and journalists, these pictures are meant to illustrate their presentations of 'what is actually there'. Both types of photographs are known as ethnographic photography. This study. asks and attempts to answer the question: how do we study ethnographic photography? As much as photographers attempt to portray their subjects realistically, their representations are often contested and criticised as entrenching subjugation, displacement and dehumanisation of indigenous peoples through 'visual metaphors' and other significatory regimes. This discussion reconsiders the concept of imaging others, by offering an analytical semiotic comparison between Paul Weinberg's anchored and published photographic texts of the Bushmen, on the one hand, and Sian Dunn's unpublished, inactive texts of the #tKhomani Bushmen, on the other. The discussion is an attempt to understand documentary photographers, processes of producing of images, the contexts in which they are produced and how the communities that are represented make sense of them. Concerns with the objectivity of representation go beyond the taking and consuming pictures of other cultures. This study is, therefore, grounded in cultural, social and ideological factors that shape the production and consumption ofphotographic representations of and from other cultures. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Natal, Durban, 2002.

This thesis maps the existence, extent and diverse applications of the magic lantern in the Australasian colonies and brings to light a cultural practice that had remained largely invisible in histories of photography, cinema, and popular culture in nineteenth century Australasia. The thesis demonstrates that the magic lantern was popular as entertainment on both a private, domestic and a public scale. It traces its widespread adoption in two broad institutional contexts, the educational and the religious, and shows how this wide-ranging practice and consumption was supported by developing social and commercial infrastructure in the colonies and a network of touring lanternists. It argues that the magic lantern located the Australasian colonial culture within a global one centred around the consumption of visual technology and an international exchange of images. Colonial audiences were not, however, merely the passive recipients of a globalised imagery or culture. They were active contributors to it, constructing their own meanings in response to imported images. The thesis argues that, while the magic lantern functioned to affirm a sense of imperial identity in both colonisers and the colonised, it was adapted locally to the creation of colonial, intercolonial and regional identities, as an alternative to a dominant Eurocentric mass-mediated world view. Colonial practitioners applied this powerful medium to the generation of images at a local level that reveal an enthusiasm for colonial events and stories, a sense of place, and a celebration of local identity on the big screen.

This thesis maps the existence, extent and diverse applications of the magic lantern in the Australasian colonies and brings to light a cultural practice that had remained largely invisible in histories of photography, cinema, and popular culture in nineteenth century Australasia. The thesis demonstrates that the magic lantern was popular as entertainment on both a private, domestic and a public scale. It traces its widespread adoption in two broad institutional contexts, the educational and the religious, and shows how this wide-ranging practice and consumption was supported by developing social and commercial infrastructure in the colonies and a network of touring lanternists. It argues that the magic lantern located the Australasian colonial culture within a global one centred around the consumption of visual technology and an international exchange of images. Colonial audiences were not, however, merely the passive recipients of a globalised imagery or culture. They were active contributors to it, constructing their own meanings in response to imported images. The thesis argues that, while the magic lantern functioned to affirm a sense of imperial identity in both colonisers and the colonised, it was adapted locally to the creation of colonial, intercolonial and regional identities, as an alternative to a dominant Eurocentric mass-mediated world view. Colonial practitioners applied this powerful medium to the generation of images at a local level that reveal an enthusiasm for colonial events and stories, a sense of place, and a celebration of local identity on the big screen.