Date of Submission
9-2022
Type of Work
Dissertation
Principal Supervisor
Jodie Taylor
Keywords
Artist Book, Aura, Curation, Cosmopolitanism, Capitalism, Flaneur, Image Culture, Photography, Post-digital, Richard Mosse, Surveillance, Susan Sontag, Technology, Teju Cole, Walter Benjamin
Audience
Parental Guidance (PG) - mild impact language/themes
Abstract
This project identifies and examines the emergent themes in the original photographic work of Australian photographer Jared O’Sullivan from 2009 – 2019 and reflects on the curation and production of a retrospective artist book that celebrates a decade of professional practice.
The exegesis explores how the creation of an artist book retrospective can illuminate underlying themes in past works and how curation as method facilitates the discovery and communication of these new insights into practice. Referencing the works of Charles Baudelaire, Walter Benjamin and Susan Sontag, the literature review explores the effects of technology in relation to photographic theory and curation. Furthermore, it recontextualises the role of the flaneur and identifies a confluence between the documentary photographer and the flaneur. Through his use of photography as a means to ‘suspend reality’, O’Sullivan’s work echoes the desires of the Flaneur, that is to make the transitory eternal, and poetry from history. Using the literature review as a method to inform the curatorial framework for the book design and content, the assemblage of the artist book results in a cultural artefact that unifies the artists commercial and artistic identities.
Recommended Citation
O’Sullivan, J. (2022). Post-Digital Curation: The Contemporary Flaneur, Technology and the Artist Book. [Masters dissertation, SAE University College]. Creo.
Included in
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