A contextual gaze : photograph as an act of re-contextualisation

Abstract

A Contextual Gaze is a studio based investigation focusing on the role of context and gaze in installations, photography and exhibitions. The research began by enquiring into the function of photography as an act of capturing a scene created through the arrangements of found objects in installations. In this project, context and gaze draw attention to how the act of viewing is imperative to how photographs express the associative meanings of the photographer, and how installations are an expression of the artist's directorial vision as an organising concept In creating and organising scenes to be photographed objects are re-contextualised from their original function. Context is also important because the scenes are generated from associations with objects as they trigger memories from personal experiences. Putting objects in the physical world into a coherent context transforms them and gives them new meanings, as the photographs capture not only the physical objects arranged but also the scenes imagined and created in the mind. The exegesis engages with the various philosophical discourses on photography and installation that informed the research, particular1y the work of Henri Cartier-Bresson, because of his emphasis on the mind's eye and the importance of the decisive moment in framing and capturing a scene, and Ansel Adams, Alfred Steiglitz, Irving Pem, Paul Strand and Lazlo Moholy-Nagy for their photography experiments away from representational documentation. The Surrealists and the Arte Povera movements are also positioned as important, particularty because of the method that Dali used to juxtapose objects in installations and photography to convey different meanings, and Pistoletto's use of found objects in installations. The methodologies associated with the research are aligned with all these methods of re-contextualising objects to give them new meanings. The research is not essentially concerned with installation practices, but with the role of the photograph and the ad of photographing as a form of recontextualisation; as a means of framing the world as a stage and the objects in it with narratives. Thus the exegesis utilises the concept of the mise-en-scene to explore this concem, in relation to installations in the studio but also expands it to photographs of landscapes and urban scenes. The progress of the research is mapped in the exegesis from early concems with photographing installations to experiments with manipulating the photographs in order to draw attention to, or heighten, these processes of re­ contextualisation. By focusing upon what is staged for the camera, as well as how the photographer can view the world as mise-en-scenes that tell their own stories, the research is framed as a contribution to our understanding of the photograph as more than an objective representation, and to photography as an intentionalact of transforming the world as we see it. The exegesis details how the methodologies of the research were carried through to the exhibition and informed its conceptual framework of photographs as arrangements with associative meanings, or as formalcompositions, in the last stage of the research. The movement towards manipulating photographs until they achieved complete abstraction is an outcome of the project which points towards possible further research in the relationship between the photograph and its referent, as well as how we approach the role of photographer and the mediating act of photography as a process of re-contextualisation.