#advancedreseachmethods

Images in the gallery would discuss the realms of politics not only in public but also in the private realms of society, they discussed and explored ideas about sexuality, identity, gender roles in both public and domestic spaces. The Photographers Gallery had gathered over two hundered works by these artists into four chapters ‘The Seductive Body’, ‘Domestic Agenda’, ‘In My Skin’ and ‘Alter Ego’. This curating choice hence highlighted each chapterin how they each subjected themselves to these challenges in society and the art world. It also highlights the role the woman artists played through their radical practices and how thier subjects are a continuing relevance and influence in modern day politics, social conduct and the art world.

As such we can interpret art and photography in its historical context e.g. how it presented ideas or events of political or scientific result. In methodic means the photographer illustrates, with materials and text, their social placement and the influences of their time in their specific environment and culture. We then study these concepts in relation to popular historical context of the time; we try to observe the photographic or artistic concept with the thoughts and influences active at the time. History method, through re-examination of art and photographer brings new light to the individuals work and use of the medium. We learn and understand their intentions for using certain materials or compositions. We compare our knowledge of the chronological historical influences and the aesthetic of the body of work and bring depth into their concept for our understanding.

This session of methodologies we explored the city and our relationship with it: discussing the city and its two main characteristics as The Spectacle and The Everyday. We can start by analysing The Spectacle of the Urban City with its percussion noise and communication throughout and ever more industrialised and materialistic city. In a documentary movie representation of the urban and its relationship with its consumers (“Man with a Movie Camera”) illustrates a systematic and almost symmetric architectural approach to the city, it seems almost as though the spectacle of the city is dependent on the relation humans have with their industrial architecture; it is an organised chaos, a technological embrace in the city in which humans operate with and around. Photomontages on the other hand exhibit the fragments of the city that melt into an urban and technological puzzle piece.

The History and Theory of Art, as methods of analysis and critical discussion of appropriate images, explore the evolution of movements in their historical and social contexts as well as how they come to affect the illustration or representation of subjects by influenced artists and photographers. In photography, Art History studies the roots of the image composition, providing comparisons of works from other mediums that may have influenced the photographer to provide their audience with specific symbols or history in their composition. This is then merged with the influences and movements at the time in which images were shot or created; for example the photomontages during the Dada and Surrealist Movements. Though both these movements are separate bodies of work and influence, the Dada movement, most active from 1916 to 1924, inspired the rise into the Surrealist movement. Both explored the political and sociological aspects of the time through their specialised aesthetic: mocking or criticising through widely influential bodies of work on the politics of their time.  Their compositions, history and theories are what make them influential to this day in contemporary art and photography.

The basic disscussions within philospohy of photography and still images take analysis on: the ontology of photography and whether images by photographers come under the suspected identities of photography; the ethics of photography and images; and the aesthetics of images taken by photographers.