Time and materiality in photography

Abstract

This MA thesis Time and Materiality in Photography focuses on image-making in a natural environment and on the project Hraun shown at the graduation exhibition at Gerdasafn Museum from 16. April- 16. May 2016. I write about several art projects and experiments that I have conducted in particular settings in the Icelandic landscape and contextualize with examples from other artists works (eg. Lisa Oppenheim, Jochen Lempert, Lorna MacIntyre, László Moholy-Nagy, Anna Atkins, Evariste Richer and Dove Allouche). In making the field-based works I draw on my background in photography and my knowledge and understanding of the medium as a contemporary image-making tool. One of my main interests is photography’s relation to time, materiality and surface. In the field-based works my intention has been to challenge the sealed of two-dimentional surface of photography by treating light- sensitive photographic paper like a sculptural material.Using light sensitive photographic paper in direct contact with the landscape, the information of the surroundings is making the image. This process is linked to photograms where (traditionally) objects are placed on a light sensitive surface, then exposed to light. In this thesis I will focus on works made without the use of a camera and questions in relation to time and materiality in photography. To do this I draw in some thoughts on the surface in photography raised by James Elkins in What Photography Is 1 and Alva Nöe’s considerations on timelessness and temoral extent put forward in Experience of the World in Time in the book Varieties of Presence2. In order to frame these viewpoints on time and materiality in photography, I make a sketch of the different voices in the discourse around photography in modernism and postmodernism, utilizing the book Burning with Desire – a conception of photography by Geoffrey Batchen3. Finally I write about my most recent project Hraun and put this project in relation to contemporary artists who’s work are connected to the methods and subjects that I am engaged with.