Date on Master's Thesis/Doctoral Dissertation

5-2017

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

M.F.A.

Department

Studio Arts

Degree Program

Studio Art and Design, MFA

Committee Chair

Eckert, Mitch

Committee Co-Chair (if applicable)

Carothers, Mary

Committee Member

Carothers, Mary

Committee Member

Hufbauer, Benjamin

Committee Member

Reilly, Elizabeth

Author's Keywords

photography; hoax; parafiction; hippolyte bayard; sokal; horizon cross

Abstract

Horizon Cross: A Parafictional History Through Photographs is a body of work that dwells within the intersection between truth and fiction in photography. It is informed by the history of hoax photographs and my fascination with the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland and black holes, the space-time boundary of which is known as an event horizon. I have imagined into being a community in northern Ontario Province, equipped with the technology of the mid-nineteenth century but also with concepts far ahead of their time. To portray the inhabitants of Horizon Cross I have created photographic portraits of fictional people that I am presenting as cabinet cards, in order to reference a specific moment in time through the use of historically appropriate photographic processes as well as to explore portraiture and create photographic artifacts. I have combined historically appropriate imagery in the cabinet cards with imagery unique to Horizon Cross. Like my concept of fact and fiction, my technical process is a hybrid of modern digital and traditional chemical based photography: it is important that the cabinet cards are albumen prints mounted on cardstock that have been letter pressed with era appropriate graphic design and fonts. While I may have created the individual portraits, I have assembled them collectively as evidence of the existence of Horizon Cross.

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