PhD Thesis: SNAPSHOT PHOTOGRAPHY: A PHATIC, SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED, MNEMONIC TECHNOLOGY - READ

Abstract

This practice related research study explores my cognitive response to a biographical snapshot photograph celebrating my first day at school. The experience triggered an exploration of the relationship between snapshot photographs and memory. The finding of a second almost identical snapshot photograph of my son taken twenty years later by me prompted me to question why my father and I should take almost identical snapshots.

I argue that the invention of photography was driven by the desire to capture the images created by the camera obscura by mark-making with the pencil of light as an aid memoir.

I argue that the desire to externalise memory using mnemonic technology is innate with primal origins in parietal art and lithic technologies. The discourse explores the cultural evolution of technology through Jaques Derrida’s theory of originary technicity and Bernard Stiegler’s concept of the cultural evolution of technology by epiphylogenesis and the notion of the externalisation of memory as prosthesis.

I explore the emergence of snapshot photography from the canon of photography through the theories of cultural evolution, technological momentum, and social constructivism, together with psycho-social notions of desire, ritual, performativity and intentionality in the establishment of snapshot photography as a ubiquitous ingrained social practice.

The research is informed by a studio practice element that uses the adventures of Lewis Carroll’s, Alice as a conceptual framework to explore a journey of agency, self and auto didactical knowledge acquisition. I discuss the search for an appropriate methodological framework for art practice based research.

My practice is a catalyst for enquiry; a project usually starts with an artefact that forms the locus of a question, the search for the answer to those questions, often leading epistemically, to unexpected places and relationships. The mode and manner of my enquiry are rhizomatous, pragmatic and serendipitous; the relationship between practice and theory is flexible, one informing the other.

Through practice, I explore the deconstruction and textualisation of the visual metaphor of memory through the rhetorical devices of ekphrasis and memory texts and a visualisation of the nature and originary technicity of snapshot photography and an exploration of self and place.

The thesis for this study is founded on the premise that snapshot photography is a socially constructed, phatic, mnemonic mark-making technology with origins in parietal forms of visual expression.

Thesis Download Links

 UPDATE: 23 August 2020

The former link to my Thesis is no longer available, here are alternative links to the completed Thesis and the Powerpoint Presentation of the exhibition that was part of my practice related research

Link the Lancaster University Research Directory page http://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/snapshot-photography(82923ac2-44bd-4800-9be3-191d9f63f802).html

Link to the PhD Thesis PDF document file 
http://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/services/downloadRegister/201945481/Parker2017phd.pdf

Link to the  Powerpoint Presentation of the accompanying Exhibition  
http://www.research.lancs.ac.uk/portal/services/downloadRegister/201945483/PhD_Exhibition_Presentation.pptx

Our Helpful Brains

Our helpful brains

I have referenced this anecdote about how wonderful our brain is on a number of occasions. Just stumbled across it again on the blog at ChangingMinds.org and have borrowed it:-

You know we have wonderfully helpful brains. Just chuck it a bunch of mismatched information and it'll somehow manage to make sense of what you give it. For example you can jumble up the letters in word letter in a sentence and still make sense of it - just as long as you preserve the first and last letters. (jsut as lnog as you psrevere the fsirt and lsat ltretes).

This works for words too. Caldwell-Harris and Morris (2008) presented subjects with pairs of words in reversed order, such as 'card credit' and 'you thank'. Even though these are obviously the wrong way around, many people reported them as being the right way. Their subconscious brains heard the words and corrected them on the fly before presenting them to their conscious, which of course has only a few moments to make sense before the next thing in the stream of consciousness comes along.

The brain also helps you see things you think you should see and ignore things that do not make sense. And when it comes to memory, it gets worse as we easily forget things we just perceived (like people's names) and will swear to things happening which did not.

The bottom line is that what we think is true, even if we have just experienced it, is not necessarily so. If in doubt (and maybe if not), always look twice.

Reference:
Caldwell-Harris, C. and Morris, A. (2008). Fast Pairs: A visual word recognition paradigm for measuring entrenchment, top-down effects, and subjective phenomenology. Consciousness and Cognition, 17 (4), 1063-1081.

Source: http://changingminds.org/blog/blog.htm

"the photographic diary project" by Jimmy Owenns

Reposted from Rhizome 2001

This work by Jimmy Owenns reflects some of my own ideas about the concept of the photograph album, the snapshot photograph and the manner in which we take and react to such photographs. I am interested in both Jimmy s concept and his choice and use of medium and his mode of presentation.