The Photograph as Haptic and Virtual Object: Realms of Ephemeral Sensation and Material Objecthood

The Photograph as Haptic and Virtual Object: Realms of Ephemeral Sensation and Material Objecthood, comprises practice-led research evaluating the dimensional qualities and objecthood of the photograph in light of recent technological developments and philosophical discourse. The project appraises tensions between the object/subject placed in front of the camera apparatus to be photographed, and the photograph as representative of abstract space, abstraction produces a space for the viewer to enter into the image. Through a combination of arts practice and accompanying text the research investigates what a photograph can be in hybrid form, querying the thingness of the medium through technological convergence. The artwork produced contributes to an examination of the dimensional qualities of print, rousing in the viewer a desire to touch the artefact. Intrinsic to this study is an investigation into the history of photography and its prehistory (1790-1836). Contemplating the material and representational charge the photographic medium has to transcend the history of analogue, and seep into the virtual. The research is informed by key texts on photography by Roland Barthes, Geoffrey Batchen, Jean Baudrillard, Elizabeth Edwards, Lyle Rexer and Marina Warner, and on the phenomenon of landscape and nature with reference to Tim Ingold and John Wylie. Rather than presenting the distant perspective and spectacle of the view or scape, the work presents an interpretation of being in (and passing through) landscape. Rather than looking at landscape, a subjective perspective of embodied experience of place is offered. Source material is the landscape of East Scotland, and photographic collections held in archives at V&A, London (collections previously held at National Media Museum, Bradford), Grenna Museum Polar Centre, Sweden and Harry Ransom Center, Austin, Texas. Through focussing on three bodies of practice-research, Glass Landscapes (2014-15), An Expedition (2015-18) and Neither Here nor There (2017-20) each invite a search for place through the photographic act, beginning and ending with landscape. Drawing from nineteenth century proto photographers the research is further informed by contemporary photography exhibitions - Shadow Catchers (2010, V&A London, curator Martin Barnes), What Is a Photograph? (2014, ICP, New York, curator Carol Squiers), Emanation: The Art of Cameraless Photography (2015, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Zealand, curator Geoffrey Batchen) and Light, Paper, Process: Reinventing Photography (2015, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, curator Virginia Heckert). The artist’s methodology as maker (both my own and others) is at the forefront of this research. Deliberating on a compulsion to create interpretations of landscape in abstract form, new insights into representations of place are presented through the material and temporal qualities of the medium. The key research question of this PhD is: • How can the imprint of the maker reposition photography’s connectivity to the referent