< Terug naar vorige pagina

Publicatie

Unweaving the rainbow: A multi-method approach to the empirical aesthetics of photography

Boek - Dissertatie

Photography is a child of our time and place, and has reached an omnipresence in our current society. By combining visual elements in a certain way, careful framing, waiting for the right moment and editing, photographers hold in their hands a very powerful system to convey meaning, stir feelings, tell stories and inspire reactions in others. Yet, despite the omnipresence of our interactions with photography, our scientific understanding of the perceptual and aesthetic effects of photographs is surprisingly limited (Jacobsen & Beudt, 2017 in Frontiers in Psychology; McManus & Stöver, 2014 in The Cambridge Handbook of the Psychology of Aesthetics and the Arts). Grounded in psychology and empirical aesthetics, this dissertation was built around the central question: How do people look at, and aesthetically appreciate, photography?. This question was approached through six scientific studies and one personal visual essay, adding up to a total of 730 unique photographs, with responses from 1243 unique participants. The variety in methods (quantitative, qualitative, method of production), photographs (varied contemporary artistic photographs, as well as participants' own submitted photographs), contexts (lab, online, exhibition, everyday life), viewers (student samples and broader general samples, variation in expertise), main focus (e.g., visual processing, meaning-making, emotional responses, context influences, everyday aesthetics), and outcomes (pleasure, interest, beauty, ugliness, preference) ensured that the topic was approached broadly, while still being sensitive to the nuances in our highly integrated aesthetic responses to the layered medium of photography. In terms of visual processing, results revealed the complex and highly integrated nature of photography, showing that even in semi-abstract photographs visual complexity can be confounded with the subject matter of the photograph (Chapter 2), and that perceived processing fluency is reflected in the combination of different photograph layers and differentially affects pleasure versus interest (Chapter 3). A more general exploration of the visual rightness for several variants of the same photograph (Chapter 4) revealed that certain visual characteristics, such as color, light, sharpness, and composition do play a role, but that preferences are also highly dependent on other factors too, such as emotional and meaning-related associations. A more in-depth examination of the sense-making and emotional experience of artistic photographs confirmed the importance of these factors. Viewers were repulsed by photographs with negative associations, and attracted to photographs that triggered positive associations and feelings. Understanding the photograph's meaning was also important, and participants' answers revealing that the photograph's nuances were not always fully integrated into a coherent whole. Preferences were robust against context changes (theme information, other photographs), but did not align fully with those of expert judges, indicating that expertise changes the aesthetic processing of photographs (Chapter 5). Some of these findings (e.g., the importance of feeling moved, nuances between experts and novices, and the fact that context information is sometimes ignored) were also found in an exhibition study with photography series (Chapter 6). Finally, several of the aforementioned findings were corroborated, when participants were asked to produce their own ugly and beautiful photographs (during the COVID-19 lockdown; Chapter 7). Participants used color and editing to differentiate their beautiful photographs from the ugly ones (which were also less sharp, and lacked effort), and composition and light could be used to produce beautiful or ugly photographs, depending on how they were used. There was an aesthetic preference for (living) nature, and negative versus positive associations were reflected in ugly versus beautiful photographs. This study revealed an intimate photographic window into the COVID-19 lockdown. I also reflected on my own COVID-19 lockdown experiences through a personal photography series, and accompanying reflection about what makes photography such a fascinating medium to work with (Chapter 8). Altogether, in this dissertation, I aimed to unweave the rainbow of our aesthetic experiences with photography, and showed that this is a beautiful challenge for psychology and empirical aesthetics. Results have implications for empirical aesthetics, the photography practice, and for our understanding of photography literacy, a topic that is increasingly important in a world filled with trillions of photographs.
Jaar van publicatie:2021
Toegankelijkheid:Embargoed