Document Type
Thesis, Senior
Degree
B. ARCH
Date
Spring 2019
Keywords
denuded photographs, perspective, materiality, relativity, architecture, images, scales, models
Language
English
Disciplines
Architecture
Description/Abstract
The Denuded Image aims to create a conversation between a photograph and its viewer by adding back the third dimension. It is not a proposal of how architects should design space, but a model for observation and study of how to create new ways of seeing. The dioramas at 1:8, 1:4, and 1:2 scales expose the reality of the forced perspective and the denuded photograph's distorted characters. As scale increases, the observer is invited to engage with the in-visible parts of the image that differ in materiality. The final spectacle includes all models and their respective images, to expose the truth and reality of what lies behind the image material.
We begin to understand things through the images we see of them. The photograph translates reality to the human eye, capturing principles that help us understand our own optics, such as perspective, materiality, and relativity. A photograph functions alone and is a flattened translation of space; this thesis aims to reconstruct the third dimension of a photograph using methodologies such as perspective to develop a series of dioramas. The photographs are denuded, stripped of the preconceived materials in order to focus on formal explorations. Each diorama is fixed to one favored view, where we see the denuded image. It isn't until the observer's viewpoint is shifted into an unidealized station point, that they can begin to understand that what they thought was a normal space is actually physically distorted to distinguish it from its reality. The parts of the original image that the camera couldn't capture have been translated into a framework that supports the material of the denuded image. Without the in-visible areas, the reconstructed image would not exist.
This thesis is a study of images, perspective, and human perception. This tension between the spectacle and the viewer creates new ways of seeing and understanding space.
Recommended Citation
Li, Danya, "The Denuded Image: A Critique of the After-Image" (2019). Architecture Senior Theses. 508.
https://surface.syr.edu/architecture_theses/508
Source
Local Input
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Additional Information
Thesis Advisors:
Nicole Mcintosh