Abstract

For more than three decades, Lynne Cohen has photographed unpeopled, semi-public institutional and corporate interiors. These haunting, foreboding pictures are frequently discussed for their subject matter: the rooms and what they contain are seen as anthropomorphic, with chairs conversing and plants crouching sedately in their plastic pots. The one-way glass of the windows in laboratories is exposed for its surveillance purposes, while the dummies and targets in factories and police ranges are named as surrogates for the people that are not to be found in these photographs. The works are measured against art movements of the past: Dada, Surrealism, Modernism, Pop and Minimal art. The shifts in the types of places that Cohen photographs have been noted, from living rooms up to military installations. What has been infrequently discussed is how the photographs have changed stylistically. In this thesis, Cohen's images are discussed in terms of their scale, the way that the objects and surfaces change within the prints, her unique framing, and her use of colour film within the past decade.