Research
for me to be photographed with: towards a non-representational new materialist self portrait
PhD research project
Abstract
for me to be photographed with: towards a non-representational new materialist self portrait
for me to be photographed with: towards a non-representational new materialist self-portrait is a practice-led project that cuts facets into the subject of self. Through this dissertation, I consider the potential of new materialist philosophies to expand notions of self within the restrictive parameters of photographic self-portraiture. The documented process of creating a photographic almanac sees my ‘self’ straightened, queered, prototyped, redacted, extracted, diffracted, tossed across temporalities and eventually crumbled into dust.
Unformed: An Almanac combines images made using polaroid film, scans taken from a box of family artefacts dating back to 1802, and landscape images made on a 35mm point-and-shoot camera. Through its construction in relation to the accompanying dissertation, I found a faceted approach to making and thinking that both considers and does new materialism.
Within this dissertation, a close examination of the materials of photographic practice sees the self in this project emerge in dialogue with new materialist philosophies and my own personal narrative. I consider how the photographic self-portrait emerges through a shared relationship between nature, culture and technology: materials of the earth, light, time, space, me and the camera. This project posits that the mercurial nature of self resists the genre of self-portraiture. By exploring and making with theories that move away from the ‘human’, I offer a new locus for, and a more fluid relationship between, the self and photographic practice.
