The purpose of this study is to look at how the figure is imaged through the photographic medium today. Through this purpose I aim to explore the individual expression of the photographer in his photographic medium; the expression of the figure within the medium and the diverse practises of this medium in society - to build up an awareness and understanding of the diverse representations of the human form. The general aims of study are: 1 - to study how these three photographers choose to photograph the figure, through their technical, compositional and individual approach. 2 - to show how diverse the usage of the photographic figure is in the visual world. 3 - to expose an awareness of the photographic figure as transformation of an expression of self. 4 - to show the relationship between the photographer and the figure, the camera and the photographer, the camera and the figure, and the photographic figure and the viewer. 5 - to study my own photographic imagery in relation to the other imagery discussed. My research information was collected through: observations, discussions, literature and practical exploration. This study will attempt to draw conclusions, from its explorations, that will highlight the importance of the individual eye: that it is the individual eye that becomes the vehicle of transformation.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 442-455).

This thesis proposes that California contemporary photographer Catherine Opie's Being and Having series (1991) and her Portrait series (1993-1996) parody the constraining binary gender discourse and stereotypes that emanate from it. In her art Opie uses familiar codes and identity discourses associated with traditional portrait photography and typological photographs to promote a postmodern and fluid model of gender identity. Her manipulation of photographic technique and subject matter validates cultural stereotypes of gender at the same time that it destabilizes them. Opie also simultaneously highlights fallacies such as the presumed objectivity and evidential force that is associated with the discourse of portrait photography as a documentary field. By presenting her portraits of lesbians to broad-based audiences in such a blatant and stylized manner, Opie comments on the limitations of society's continued reliance on gender non-nativity and physiognomic modes of identifying communities.

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Humanities University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts (History of Art), 2017 / This research was instigated by a collection of uncollected portraits (completed and incomplete), photographs, letters, papers, documents, passbooks, and other materials, left behind when an airbrush portraiture studio, The Aqua Portrait Studio, closed in about 1998 after fifty years of continuous business. The portraits were created by enlarging small original photos – sometimes from two separate sources – and then colouring them with an airbrush and other materials. Because of the nature of the airbrush technique, it was possible to change the original image completely: to clothe the sitters in completely imaginary attire, for example, and pose them together with someone they had possibly never been photographed with. This process gave rise to a genre in which people could re-imagine themselves, enact other personas. Because the fifty years of existence of this studio almost coincided with the years of apartheid (the studio was open from about 1950 to about 1998), it seemed that the collection of uncollected images and notes left behind could be a source of rich information about the people who were the studio's clients, the process of acquiring airbrushed portraits, and the social and historical context in which those involved lived. I start with three fundamental questions: Since this portraiture form grew so exponentially in popularity, especially during the apartheid years, what specific significance and meaning had it taken on for the communities who were buying the portraits? What need was it meeting? What can we learn about these lives from this collection? The research takes two forms. First, it closely interrogates the material objects in the collection; and second, it tracks the routes of clients and salesmen to what were some of the former homelands of the northern part of South Africa. Both these investigations attempt to understand the possible roles and contribution of these pictures to the construction and reconstruction of self-identity under apartheid. / XL2018

Senegal’s leading role in the development of African modernism in the 1960s is well known. Lesser-known is that, a century earlier, photography first arrived and took root in Senegal before circulating across French West Africa. This dissertation focuses on the genre of photographic portraiture in a country that did not have sculptural or masquerade traditions. It studies the ways in which photography accommodated and fostered new social and artistic practices and identities in Senegal between 1860—when the first studio opened in Saint Louis, the historical capital—and the 1960s, when photography became a “social imperative,” to use Geoffrey Batchen’s description (2001). The first chapter discusses cartes-de-visite commissioned as early as the 1860s by the first Senegalese patrons. In the course of this discussion, I challenge unilateral conceptions of photography as an apparatus of ideological control monopolized by the colonial authority. Chapter Two argues that Islam—the predominant religion in Senegal since the late nineteenth century—facilitated the popularity of the genre of portraiture through the circulation of devotional images in the form of lithographs, glass painting and photographs between the 1890s and 1920s. Chapter Three focuses on two photo series by amateur photographers from Saint Louis in the interwar period. I argue that these snapshots delineate the birth of a new subjectivity that neither mimicked French culture, nor conformed to Wolof customs. The last chapter juxtaposes the work of Mama Casset and Oumar Ka, two studio photographers working in the 1960s and 70s, in the capital and the rural interior of the country, respectively. In doing so I revisit the association between photography’s modernity and urban living, and propose that modernity can also be linked with “rural” tastes and styles. Rather than interpret it as either a “foreign” or “local” technology, this dissertation traces the fluctuations of photography’s significance in a dialectic relation with European, Islamic, American, African and Indian sources, revealing the nature of the medium as a multiplier of visions. Given Senegal's privileged status within La Grande France, this analysis will contribute to our understanding of the relationship between photography and modernity in Africa and beyond.

behold, be still illuminates my predilection, that of a portrait photographer, which is driven by a fascination with viewing and collecting the ‘other’, the male, now extending into this suite of still moving portraits. Through this act and in my art practice, I uncover the vulnerabilities, both for myself and for my subjects, as they are offered for scrutiny on screen to become ‘public’, unlike their previous position in my photographic archive, which is private. I reveal for the first time my pathology in the drive to collect surrogates and stand-ins, to console the loss and give solace for the absence of one- revealing a latent scopophilia. Photography histories, specifically portraiture, and the moving image are discussed, focusing on the binaries of the medium/s, their reflective and reflexive qualities, and their inherent ability to reveal and conceal. My visual inquiry is an expansion to experiencing the portrait by presenting the sitters as close to ‘themselves’ via the medium of high definition video portraits. I expel the implications of women looking at men, and review the work of both significant and historical feminine influences and contemporary women artists positioned and working in this territory and who employ both film and photography. I highlight Victorian women and the melancholic age, where photography is deeply embedded, tracing the origins and lineage to my current work. I seek to define and locate the notion of a beautiful masculine, investigating what it is to view, receive, and collect between the axis of photography and video via the intimate exchange and operatives of my gendered and privileged gaze. The success is determined by the tension between these two machines and resulting portraits, as the act in sitting for a portrait with the technology of today, renders a more ‘accurate’ portrayal. From this the moving portrait completes the desire and an opportunity to obtain and possess the beloved after their absence. Crucial issues become apparent as I examine the imprint of the real in the photograph, the camera as a surrogate for myself, and the passive yet consensual subject.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio University, June, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 280-297)

No description available.

This article explores the roles that porcelain portraits on grave markers play in identity construction and performance. Through semi-structured interviews, the biographies of five individuals are examined and then compared to determine norms or differences regarding their views on sepulchral photographs as a form of memorialization. While the decision to display a gravestone portrait could simply be a long-standing cultural practice, this interpretivist study indicates that the role of photo-tombstones is negotiated through a hybridization process involving religious syncretism, cultural convergence, or familial expectations. The role of photography as material culture is also examined, both as a metonymic replacement for the deceased and for its links to memory recall and remembrance.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of English Language and Literature, August 2002. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.