Art & Art History ETDs

Publication Date

5-13-1975

Abstract

Increasing recognition of many incongruities in the quality of life has somehow given birth to a growing sensibility of irony as a basic element of seeing, of subtly evaluating, contemporary America. The growth of the sensibility appears to be far from complete, and its accessibility increases along with the rising visibility of the historical, social, moral, political, and aesthetic discrepancies between what we hoped for and what is. The ability of photography to objectively describe and to simultaneously isolate, expose, and fictionalize a subject make it a medium ideally suited to explore these discrepancies. Regardless of a photographer's intent all photographs combine the elements of visible fact and subjective opinion in a precarious and fluctuating balance. This constant interplay between the two, which is at once the central paradox and the profound power of photography, has become an important vehicle for the expression of alienation and outrage at the widening gulf between the once limitless possibilities of this country and the sobering realities at hand. This dissertation seeks not to explain the reasons for these incongruities, but to discuss the beginnings and thoughts and to follow the development of the ironic element in "straight" photography in America – as a pure form of response to and as a mirror of culture.

Beginning with lengthy examinations of the work of Walker Evans and of Robert Frank, the method of the paper is to examine in detail the literary and formal content of selected photographs. Other photographers whose work is discussed are Lee Friedlander Gary Winogrand, and Diane Arbus, as well as some lesser known, contemporary photographers for whom an ironic stance is a fundamental aspect of their style, and a necessary assumption to understand the meaning of their photographs. The general conclusion reached is that some amount of irony has become an increasingly inevitable by-product of consciousness, and yet in the best work, it is at once a shared attitude and something to be balanced with the inescapable passion and intelligence found in any work of art which lasts longer than its own generation.

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Arts

Level of Degree

Masters

Department Name

UNM Department of Art and Art History

First Committee Member (Chair)

Thomas R. Barrow

Second Committee Member

Beaumont Newhall

Third Committee Member

Nicolai Cikovsky Jr

Fourth Committee Member

Van Deren Coke

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