La série Portrait-paysage : rencontre, évènement, affects s’intéresse à la représentation de mon regard sur les liens tissés avec les personnes photographiées et explore la synthèse de deux images ayant leur langage et univers propre ; un dialogue entre un portrait et un paysage choisi. Par le portrait-paysage, je veux témoigner des expériences partagées avec les personnes ayant participé à ma recherche-création. C’est à l’occasion d’une série de rencontres dans lesquelles l’autre me donne accès à son intimité que se développe une complicité. Le portrait est créé dans le chez-soi des personnes, ouvrant à des mises en scène spontanées et intimes. Le point de vue large de mes photographies octroie une grande place à la gestuelle de la personne qui laisse transparaitre un rapport entre le photographe et la personne représentée qui marquera nécessairement l’image. Le paysage quant à lui témoigne plus directement de ma perception et de mon regard, il est une interprétation et une transposition des affects vécus avec les personnes représentées. J’aime penser qu’il se crée des ponts sensibles, des rapprochements entre les différents caractères d’un lieu et les sentiments humains. La composition portrait-paysage fusionne deux regards issus d’une même relation et laisse place à l’imagination en invitant le regardeur à créer des correspondances entre les deux photographies. La série Portrait-paysage : rencontre, évènement, affects favorise une lecture active et mène à des perspectives interprétatives ouvertes.

Cette recherche prend comme objet d’étude le portrait photographique de Rineke Dijkstra, artiste néerlandaise née en 1959. Cette recherche vise à cerner la présence ainsi qu’à déterminer le sens de l’humanisme de cette approche photographique. Une analyse de la série de portraits Beach, réalisée durant la dernière décennie du vingtième siècle, est à la base de cette argumentation. Ce mémoire s’intéresse à l’analyse du portrait et ses rapports au temps, à la culture d’une époque et à la réalité sociale d’un épisode historique. L’étude du portrait de Rineke Dijkstra, tout comme le discours de celle-ci, rend compte d’un humanisme qui s’avère insister sur la représentation de la fragilité humaine. Par une revalorisation de l’«humain», le portrait de l’artiste se distingue des démarches formelles et conceptuelles du portrait contemporain, lesquelles privilégient, entre autres, un déni de la subjectivité de l’individu portraituré. L’expérience perceptive du spectateur, face au portrait de la série Beach, montre que ce portrait renvoie l’image de l’humanité du spectateur. / This present thesis, which studies the photographic portrait of Rineke Dijkstra, Dutch artist born in 1959, supports the hypothesis and explains the presence and the meaning of humanism in this photographic approach. The in-depth analysis of the Beach portraits series, created during the last decade of the twentieth century, is the base on which the arguments are elaborated. This thesis seeks answers through the analysis of the portraits and its relations with time, culture and social reality of a historical episode. The study of Rineke Dijkstra’s portraits and of her work’s discussions reveals a humanism which seems to insist on human fragility. By valuing what is deeply human in the portrait, the artist’s work distinguishes itself from the formal and conceptual approaches of the contemporary portrait which tend to a denial of the subjectivity. The perceptive experience of the viewer facing the Beach portraits series seems to reveal that the portrait returns the image of the viewer’s humanity.

This thesis studies the style of Native American portrait photographs of William S. Soule (1836-1908), John K. Hillers (1834-1925), and William E. Irwin (1871-1935), who worked in Oklahoma from 1869 to 1904. The examination of the three men's work revealed that each artist had different motivations for creating Native American portrait photographs, and a result, used a distinct style. However, despite the individual artistic styles, each artist conformed to Native American stereotypes common during the nineteenth-century. The thesis includes a discussion of the history of the area, photographer biographies, a stylistic analysis of the photographs, and how the images fit into American Indian stereotypes.

To summarize in general the use of modes by Vaughan Williams, it could be said that the works that have been analyzed are characterized by frequent use of the traditional modes, but in a very free manner. The "Kyrie" of the Mass, "Pretty Bess," "Jolly Rutterkin" and Te Deum are confined somewhat closely to given modes, with some changes of mode, changes of tonality and use of altered chords. The "Gloria," "Credo," "Sanctus," "Osanna I," "Benedictus," "Osanna II" and "Agnus Dei" of the Mass, however, contain many striking chromaticisms. These chromaticisms are the result of use of many altered chords, a good deal of modulation and much combining of modes, often with startling cross-relations. The use of seventh chords in "Pretty Bess," "Jolly Rutterkin" and Te Deum further complicates the picture from that of the sixteenth century.

This study demonstrates how royal portraiture functioned during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars as a vehicle for visualizing and processing the contemporary political upheavals. It does so by considering a notion of the 'sovereignty of the portrait', that is, the semiotic integrity (or precisely the lack thereof) and the material territory of royal portraiture at this historical juncture. Working from an assumption that the precariousness of sovereignty which delineated the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars goes hand in hand with the precariousness of representation during the same period, it reframes prevailing readings of royal portraiture in the aftermath of the French Revolution by approaching the genre less as one defined by the oneway propagation of a message, and more as a highly unstable intermedial network of representation. This theoretical undertaking is refracted through the figure of Maria Carolina, Queen of Naples (1752-1814), close sister and foil to Queen Marie- Antoinette of France, and who, as de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Naples, physically survived revolution but was twice dethroned and thrice exiled. A diverse ecology of royal portraiture revolving around Maria Carolina is presented across five case studies. Close attention to the materiality of a hyperrealistic wax bust of Maria Carolina reveals how portraiture absorbed the trauma of the French Revolution; Maria Carolina’s correspondence in invisible ink is used as a tool to read a highly distinctive visual language of 'hidden' silhouettes of sovereigns and to explore the in/visibility of exile; a novel reading of Antonio Canova's work for the Neapolitan Bourbons through the lens of contemporary caricature problematizes the binary between ancien régime and parvenue monarchy; and a unique miniature of Maria Carolina offers itself as a material metaphor for post-revolutionary sovereignty. Finally, Maria Carolina’s death mask testifies to how Maria Carolina herself became a relic of the ancien régime.

L’œuvre de YUN Duseo (1668-1715), peintre lettré ayant vécu lors de la dernière monarchie coréenne, reflète la forte sinisation de la société de l’époque. Cette œuvre est un fruit de la civilisation du « monde chinois », et interroge les principes esthétiques et le statut de la peinture dérivés de la doctrine néo-confucéenne, doctrine elle-même ici associée à des doctrines souvent considérées comme opposées, le taoïsme et le bouddhisme. YUN Duseo invente une peinture « pré-moderne » qui met en valeur de manière nouvelle des figures humaines, les portraits en particulier, et donne une nouvelle forme à des sujets courants de la peinture chinoise, les natures mortes ou les scènes de la vie quotidienne. La peinture de YUN Duseo, influencée aussi bien par un mouvement de retour aux sources de la culture chinoise que par le contact avec la culture européenne, est étudiée principalement à travers le prisme du rapport entre peinture et écriture. / The work of YUN Duseo (1668-1715), a scholar-painter who lived during the last Korean monarchy, reflects the strong sinicization of contemporary Korean society. Indeed, such work is a product of the civilization of the ‘Chinese world’: it questions the aesthetic principles and the status of painting stemming from the Neo-Confucian doctrine, a doctrine itself associated with two often opposed doctrines, Taoism and Buddhism. YUN Duseo invented a ‘pre-modern’ painting that emphasized human figures, and particularly portraits, in a novel way and gave new form to common subjects in Chinese painting, whether still lives or scenes of everyday life.YUN Duseo’s painting, influenced by a return to the sources of Chinese culture as well as by the contact with European culture, is examined here through the prism of the relation between painting and writing.

The Enigma of Appearances is an examination into the medium of three-dimensional photography, with particular focus on the technique of stereoscopy. Invented in the mid-Victorian era, stereoscopy was an attempt to simulate natural three-dimensional perception via a combination of optics, neurology, and a pair of dissimilar images. Whilst successful in producing a powerful illusion of spatial depth and tangibility, the illusion produced by stereoscopy is anything but ??natural??, when compared to three-dimensional perception observed with the naked eye. Rather, stereoscopic photography creates a strange and unnatural interpretation of three-dimensional reality, devoid of atmosphere, movement and sound, where figures appear frozen in mid-motion, like waxwork models, or embalmed creatures in a museum. However, it is precisely stereoscopic photography??s unique and enigmatic interpretation of three-dimensional reality, which gives it its strength, separating it from being a mere ??realistic?? recording of the natural world. This thesis examines the unique cultural position that stereoscopy has occupied since its invention in 1838, from its early role as a tool for the study of binocular vision, to its phenomenal popularity as a form of mass entertainment in the second half of the 19th century, to its emergence in contemporary fine art practice in the late 20th and 21stt centuries. Additionally, The Enigma of Appearances gives a detailed analysis of the theory of spatial depth perception; it discusses the dichotomy between naturalia versus artificialia in relation to stereoscopic vision; and finally, traces the development of experimental studio practice and research into stereoscopic photography, undertaken for this MFA between 2005 and 2007. The resulting work, Camera Mortuaria (Italian for ??Mortuary Room??), is a powerful and innovative series of anaglyptic portraits, based upon an experimental stereoscopic technique that enables the production of extreme close-up three-dimensional photography. Applying this technique to the reproduction of the human face in three-dimensional form, Camera Mortuaria presents a series of ??photo sculptures??, which hover between reality and illusion, pushing the boundaries of stills photography to the limit, and beyond.

<p>In this essay, Kate Chopin's portraits of women in three short stories, 'The Story of an Hour', 'A Respectable Woman', Athénaïse and the novel <em>The Awakening</em> are studied. It is argued that the outcomes depicted can be seen as increasingly provocative and extreme and that the main conflict and ending of <em>The Awakening </em>is a development and combination of the conflicts and resolutions in the three short stories.</p> / <p>I uppsatsen studeras Kate Chopins kvinnoporträtt i tre noveller, 'The Story of an Hour', 'A Respectable Woman', Athénaïse och i romanen <em>The Awakening.</em> Syftet är att visa att huvudhandlingen och slutet på <em>The Awakening</em> är en utveckling och kombination av de alltmer provokativa och extrema handlingarna och upplösningarna i novellerna.</p>

The Enigma of Appearances is an examination into the medium of three-dimensional photography, with particular focus on the technique of stereoscopy. Invented in the mid-Victorian era, stereoscopy was an attempt to simulate natural three-dimensional perception via a combination of optics, neurology, and a pair of dissimilar images. Whilst successful in producing a powerful illusion of spatial depth and tangibility, the illusion produced by stereoscopy is anything but ??natural??, when compared to three-dimensional perception observed with the naked eye. Rather, stereoscopic photography creates a strange and unnatural interpretation of three-dimensional reality, devoid of atmosphere, movement and sound, where figures appear frozen in mid-motion, like waxwork models, or embalmed creatures in a museum. However, it is precisely stereoscopic photography??s unique and enigmatic interpretation of three-dimensional reality, which gives it its strength, separating it from being a mere ??realistic?? recording of the natural world. This thesis examines the unique cultural position that stereoscopy has occupied since its invention in 1838, from its early role as a tool for the study of binocular vision, to its phenomenal popularity as a form of mass entertainment in the second half of the 19th century, to its emergence in contemporary fine art practice in the late 20th and 21stt centuries. Additionally, The Enigma of Appearances gives a detailed analysis of the theory of spatial depth perception; it discusses the dichotomy between naturalia versus artificialia in relation to stereoscopic vision; and finally, traces the development of experimental studio practice and research into stereoscopic photography, undertaken for this MFA between 2005 and 2007. The resulting work, Camera Mortuaria (Italian for ??Mortuary Room??), is a powerful and innovative series of anaglyptic portraits, based upon an experimental stereoscopic technique that enables the production of extreme close-up three-dimensional photography. Applying this technique to the reproduction of the human face in three-dimensional form, Camera Mortuaria presents a series of ??photo sculptures??, which hover between reality and illusion, pushing the boundaries of stills photography to the limit, and beyond.

A revision of the author's thesis, Heidelberg. / Includes bibliographical references.