"Constructing Ambiguous Photographs”
My research project aspires to unfold the volitional act of imbuing ambiguity in staged photography. Given that the photograph is the fallacy par excellence, and that the study of fallacies is identified with the study of rhetorical figures, I search for directorial strategies related to rhetorical devices.
Considering Photography as a language, the methodology towards the understanding of how a sense of ambiguity is produced will borrow elements from two disciplines which have dealt with this issue: Semiotics, as a structural foundation, by considering the photograph as a visual utterance, and Psycholinguistics, as guidance into how a spectator perceives a stimulus as an ambiguous one.
The understanding of the above notions will provide potentially existing devices, which my practice aspires to realize, having firstly traced and analyzed existing directorial strategies in contemporary photographic practice, via the method of 4 case studies on cutting edge artists in this field of inquiry. A Collective case design was chosen to encompass their practice, and the sources of evidence to be used are documentation, interviews and physical artefacts.
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