Date of Award

4-19-2013

Document Type

Thesis open access

Abstract

“The whole is other than the sum of the parts." ‐Kurt Koffka1

I have always been fascinated by the potential to explore visual perception uninhibited by traditional perspectives. I believe there are multiple ways to interpret and perceive a single object in a work of art. I was driven to create a series of images that embrace ambiguity by changing the normal perspective by which we usually perceive a scene. By flipping, mirroring, and reflecting my traditional landscape and nude photographs, I strive to produce an experience of transformational surrealism. This allows the imagination to see what it wants to see by offering a scene that requires its viewer to discern it piece by piece.

Influenced by the psychological theories of Rorschach and the ideas of gestaltism, I explore perception. I photographed the New Mexico, Arkansas, and Texas landscape juxtaposed with the female nude and applied the idea of multistable perception to my pieces, so that the viewer may have an ambiguous visual experience and derive multiple interpretations. In addition to questioning perception as a whole, I am also interested in examining the interdependent relationship between humans and nature. I strive to separate the photographs of the natural landscape and the female body from labels that are usually associated with these subjects. I want a rock to be more than just a rock, a cave to be more than just a cave, the curve of a body to be more than just the curve of a body. I want to create a work of art in which the "whole is other than the sum of the parts" (Koffka).1

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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