Abstract

Seeking the After-Image: Swan Songs, Place, and the Photographic Image is a practice-led research-creation initiative located at the intersection of photography, art history, and continental philosophy. The three fields of study do not seek to illustrate or justify one another, but rather act as unique contributors to a multifaceted investigation. As an initiative that reflects a crossing of disciplinary boundaries, Seeking the After-Image: Swan Songs, Place, and the Photographic Image, contributes to both contemporary art production as well as cultural and social criticism by means of a critical and reflexive engagement that intertwines studio practice and scholarly research. The doctoral study is undertaken with the conviction that a creative impulse is implicit to both scholarly research and studio praxis, and that these endeavours have the potential to stimulate and enhance one another.

The thesis consists of two complimentary components, distinct in means but integrally connected in content. This includes the realization of a comprehensive body of artwork, as well as a written thesis of critical, creative, and theoretical content. The conceptual underpinnings that inform the realization of the body of artwork act as the departure point for the written thesis. The body of artwork realized for this study, The After-Image (Swan Songs), is a series of photographs that document the landscapes and architectural sites associated with the swan songs of a selection of artists and intellectuals. My interest in how these swan songs continue to agitate, activate, or even haunt the present informs the emergence of the central concept of the after-image. The after-image embodies the notion that the past inhabits the present in very real ways, and acts as a philosophical tool to engage in dialogue with revenants that continue to populate the present. This concept binds the seemingly disparate chapters together, and emerges as a constant thread throughout the thesis.