Place: Towards a Geophilosophy of Photography

Abstract

Thisinterdisciplinary research argues how a scrupulous reading of the medium ofphotography, through geography and philosophy, can shed light on thespatiotemporal account of the concept of place. To do this, it breaks down theparticipatory elements of photography into six tropes: the photographer, thecamera, the photograph, the photographic image, the spectator, and thephotographic genre. Subsequently, it looks at each of the aforementioned tropesthrough the lens of place, indicating how a place cannot be the content of adefinite representation, as if fixed in time and space. In other words, insteadof analysing place through space, this research gives precedence to the formerto argue how place creates space (the photographer), how it fixes space (thecamera), how it passes through space (the photograph), how it interpolatesspace (the photographic image), how it promises space (the spectator), and howit operationalizes space in-between the text and the image (the photographicgenre). Therefore, rather than viewing space as an abstract entity thatcontinually evades representation, this dissertation demonstrates theimperceptible, intangible, and intractable aspects of each partaker ofphotography through its unprecedented theoretical approach.