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Thesis Info
- LABS ID
- 00912
- Thesis Title
- Reality & Meaning in the Visual Image: The Architectural & Spatial Encounter in Contemporary Photography
- Author
- Rajalakshmi Jagadeesan
- E-mail
- r.jagadeesan0720181 AT arts.ac.uk
- 2nd Author
- 3rd Author
- Degree
- MA Art and Science
- Year
- 2020
- Number of Pages
- 36
- University
- Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London
- Thesis Supervisor
- Supervisor e-mail
- Other Supervisor(s)
- Heather Barnett
- Language(s) of Thesis
- English
- Department / Discipline
- Fine Arts
- Copyright Ownership
- Languages Familiar to Author
- English
- URL where full thesis can be found
- Keywords
- architecture, cognition, visual image
- Abstract: 200-500 words
- In our current digital visual age, an appreciation for the essential nature of our physical being – of our material existence in the real world – seems in danger of losing out to the deluge of visual imagery. But what if image representations of physical spaces, especially in architectural locations, can in fact create an equally valid reality – not just an approximated sensation of being in a physically real setting, but an actually real, new spatial experience? Our cognition of physical reality resides both in the mind and in the entire bodily being, as architectural theorists and philosophers have posited. 2D visual imagery of architectural and spatial experiences, particularly in photography, can exert strong visceral responses in the viewer as actual embodied, haptic understanding and physical familiarity.
The titans of contemporary art photography, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, and Thomas Struth, have been grouped under the Düsseldorf School of Photography and have each achieved a large oeuvre that hones in on the architectural and spatial experience, as posited onto a 2D surface. Each of them offers ways to represent and interpret the facts of physical spatial reality, and their images can actually resonate as physical spaces, as powerfully deep and significant as our actual spatial experiences.
In comparison to vision as a sensory mode, hapticity is by definition constrained to being in direct contact with the physical surrounding environment. It is at this point of departure that visual representation – the image serving as depiction of physical fact, in all its complexity and emotional, social, and personal physical resonance for the viewer – comes into its own, as a pathway to knowledge of the architectural and spatial settings for our lives.