Immersive Photography: a review of the contextual knowledge of a PhD practice-led research project

Abstract

Despite its 35 years of academic presence, practice-led research is still in the process of building its status regarding definitions and its discourse. One of the fundamentals of this type of research is that practice-led expands the study to encompass questions that emerge from practice. Practice-led maintain the scientific, academic protocols and observing academic rigour, following structures and themes with the characteristics of rigour: the study goals, the methods for specific media and processes, the substantiation of the process of discovery, and nevertheless, its historical and theoretical context. This article presents the contextual and historical review of knowledge of the practice-led project developed for my PhD project: ‘The process of immersive photography: beyond the cognitive and the physical’ and considers a process methodologically and conceptually, demonstrating its nature and the manner in which it occurs in a photographer’s practice. This process enables a deeply internal yet communicative interaction between the photographer and the land. The aim is to contextualise the main notions and concepts that informed the inquiry, and this article focuses on two of these concepts: immersion, and embodiment while contributes to clarity about the contextual and historical background that informed the research.