Mirror Images: Leses of Reflection
Graduation Date
Spring 2012
Document Type
Master's Thesis
Document Form
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Program Name
Humanities
First Reader
Leslie Ross, PhD
Second Reader
Lynn Sondag, MFA
Abstract
My culminating thesis is a combination of my own creative work in black and white photography along with research and writing on the topic of “reflections’’ in selected examples from art history. My photography is a two year culmination of working in the dark room, developing and printing, through the use of traditional techniques, a series of thirty-five images that relate to my research on “reflections” as an art historical subject. This photographic study examines the theme of reflections through the use of light: sunlight, mirrors, metal, glass and water. My written thesis discusses the seventeenth century Dutch and Flemish masters and their influence on French painter Jean Bapiste Simeon Chardin (1699-1779) of the eighteenth century. It also considers several twentieth century black and white photographers, Imogen Cunningham (1883-1976), Edward Weston (1886-1958) and Irving Penn (1917-2009), whose still life works, as well as my own, focus on the theme oi “reflections.