This research investigates photographic portraits that can be considered as potentially non-mimetic images. It uses the portrait of laughter in theory and in practice to explore a ́non-like ́, iconic relation between a photograph and its model. In opposition to portraying a specific laughing sitter, here the photograph is more informed by what the viewer brings to his or her subjective encounter with that photograph. Among other subjects, my research compares portraiture to clownish performance. Hence, the photographic portrait shifts register, becoming less a likeness of the sitter, rather a portrait of the viewer ́s process of interpretation. As an extension of our understanding of the genre portraiture, I am using and testing the German term 'Bildnis', trying to find a clearer understanding of portraits that are Non-Likenesses. My main case study looks at 19th-century photographs by the French physician Duchenne de Boulogne. Duchenne researched emotional expressions by capturing the moving face twice: with medical electrization and with photography. Based on muscular contraction, he also established a theory distinguishing 'true' from 'false' laughter. Starting by isolating one photograph from the context of Duchenne ́s medical work as a leitmotif for my studies, considering it as an image in its own right, my research raises questions regarding the relation between model and photographer in photographic portraiture. It investigates what is commonly thought to be the Photographic – the photograph ́s referential status as an index in opposition to the meaning arising from its surface. In re-considering Duchenne ́s photograph within photographic histories, theories of representation aesthetics, and in relation to other photographs, I aim to lift his image out of its strictly utilitarian context as a record of an experiment. Expanding the discussion on its genres and applications, this change of context opens up a new emphasis on content and encourages its interpretation as an imaginary photograph. This claims to be not just image-informed, but also informed about the nature of images in general and photography in particular. Methodologically, the first part consists of a visual investigation into the depictibility of 'unjoyful' laughter as a 'non-like' photographic image. The second part re-stages the play of questions and answers arising from the studio practice by re-contextualizing them within a specific theoretical and historical framework of portraiture. Ultimately being two separate practices, both parts inform and reflect upon each other in approach and subject matter, deepening and widening an understanding of the medium of photography as a multi-faceted research tool.

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Thesis (M.Ed.)--Bowling Green State University, 2008. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 42 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1990. / Illustrations consist of photographs mounted on pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Infrared presensitization photography (IRPP) is a double exposure technique that allows the recording of IR information on standard silver halide films not ordinarily sensitive in this long wavelength regime. This dissertation prescribes conditions for the practical implementation of the IRPP process in data collection. It then moves on to an investigation of mechanism, i.e., "why does IRPP work?" The study is divided into experimental and theoretical portions, with much heavier emphasis on the former. Experiments delve into the behavior of the characteristic and spectral sensitivity curves of film within the context of the IRPP phenomenon. The temperature rise experienced by the film during this process is determined. The influence of sensitizing dyes and ionic population increases in the grain crystals is also explored. Theoretical efforts concentrate on an extension of the Shaw photographic model to explain the IRPP effect in terms of a down-shifting in the overall quantum sensitivity requirements of the grain population.

This thesis explores two albums of photographs of facial plastic surgery cases from the First World War. Drawing on the assumption that a photograph’s meaning comes from its use and the context in which we view it, and emerging from the archive experience and the affect that this encounter has on me as a viewer, I examine how the photographs elicit readings, affect my historical consciousness, and shape their content for me as a viewer. The study begins with a definition of Foucault’s concept of medical discourse as a means of putting the photographs into their historical context. The use of photographs to illustrate and support surgical progress played a key part in shaping medical thinking and the dissemination of information on facial surgery. The previously separate discourses of dentistry and surgery began to integrate and ‘speak’ together; photographs facilitated exchanges between dentists and surgeons and functioned as conduits through which these professions could bridge their knowledge and skills. Reading the photographs through medical discourse only takes us so far in understanding what they mean today. During the course of this research I encountered a multiplicity of reinterpretations, including uses of these photographs as part of a re-evaluation of First World War history and some instances of being integrated into family history. These photographs raise difficult questions about their function within, and potentially, across historical discourses. These surgical images problematise Foucault’s claims to using coded ways of seeing to access the photograph’s past. The surgical photographs emerged from and in turn decisively shaped one specific medical discourse. The surgical images are historical photographs, meaningful within the kinds of discursive frameworks Foucault proposed. And yet these surgical photographs in particular can affect me —and not only me — in a way that seems to cut across time and cultural convention, that generates a spark of recognition, a connection—however brief — that cannot be discursively contained. I suggest that this kind of connection lies outside what Foucault calls history. The surgical photographs complicate, or even undermine, my own understanding of history. From one point of view they are important historical documents, but from another they function in a completely different way.

This thesis discusses the multifaceted status of the photograph, as a contribution to understanding the mechanics of the production of meaning within the photograph. In order to get a better view of how photographs function, I both revisit discourses that have dealt with medium specificity issues and use my own practice, designing an apprehension model which can assist in the achievement of a more rigorous conception of the photograph. An integrative literature review, based on Photography discourses and debates shaped by both theorists and practitioners, provides the tools needed for defining the medium’s unique and shared properties. Ontological synecdoches of the photograph, issues of representation, time, automatism, agency, the twofold nature –trace and picture- as well as depiction theories of the medium are put into scrutiny towards formulating an apprehension scheme. This body or knowledge, along with my visual practice’s research outcomes, informs the construction of an appropriate model for understanding the medium’s effect. In specific, this study designs and applies a synthesized model of thought which considers photographs as a fixed unity of interdependent links in the chain called ‘act of photography’. This model is based on the parameters that contribute towards a photograph’s apprehension –Operator, Apparatus, Scenery, Photograph, Viewer (OASPV). A thorough illustration of the application of this model onto a specific photograph is provided, showing how a verbal articulation of apprehending a photograph can take place in order for bad or poor readings to be avoided. An explanation of the working strategy I applied throughout my creative practice along with a discussion upon the images chosen for the portfolio accompanying this thesis, is offered. In specific, it is shown how the apprehension scheme is reflected in my practice, along with a contextualisation of my photographs -placing emphasis in notions such as the ordinary, ineffable, serendipity, trace and picture as well as similarities to the work of other practitioners. This thesis discusses the elements that formulate the encrypted information inscribed on the surface of photographs, namely it unfolds their layers throughout creating, perceiving and conceiving them.

This practice-based research project was initiated through and informed by my own fine art practice, and examines how dust may be used as a visual element within contemporary image making to generate new modes of viewing and making. The practical work brings together the digital photographic print (as a landscape image) and images of dust to question how digital photographic surface and drawings of dust may sit together within the same pictorial surface to open up new possibilities of reading space and bringing about new apprehensions of temporality and mortality. Theoretical and philosophical context is considered through two contrasting notions of pictorial orientation, the vertical (Alberti, 1435), and the horizontal plane (Steinberg, 1972)and of the interruptive, physical and metaphorical reading of dust within the reading of the photographic printed image. An assertion of the importance of tactile touch and proximity during image creation is made, referencing the thinking of Aristotle, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. Through an analysis of a number of key artists’ works, including Helen Chadwick’s The Oval Court, Carcass (1986); Man Ray and Duchamp’s Dust Breeding (1920); and Hiroshi Sugimoto’s Seascapes – along with a series of practical investigations using a digital flat bed scanner, the research explores how shifts in making and viewing occur as a consequence of changes in image orientation and materiality, and offer the potential of disruption or interruption in the viewer’s perception of photographic space. The experiments and analysis underpin the central argument of the research and demonstrate how materiality and orientation of making are key aspects of image creation, aspects which can be manipulated to create contradictory visual readings of surface and space. The tension brought about by this visual contradiction opens up new possibilities in the perceptions and meanings within the photographic print, tension further underlined by the significant symbolic and indexical presence of dust within the image.