Thesis Title: Mythoanalysis of American contemporary staged photographers works case study: Arthur tress, Joel peter witkin, Gregory crewdson
By: Soudabeh Shaygan
Supervisor: Dr. Mohammad Khodadadi Motarjemzadeh
Degree: MA
Course of Study: Photography
September 2019
Abstract
In this thesis some motifs which are unconsciously recurrent in photographs of American contemporary staged photographers and the similarity between them and the motifs of ancient myths have been studied. since some of this repetitive motifs derives from artist's collective unconscious mind and also myths have derived from this part of mind too it's supposed that both have the same motifs. The art analyzing method of Gilbert Durand: mythoanalysis, is completely suitable for this purpose so it's been used in this thesis as the structure of stud. Based on this method at first step repetitive motifs have been detected and in second step, due to the artist's personal life and social or political circumstances it's proved that some of that motifs had been repeated consciously or under influence of circumstance. then, at last step unconsciously repeated motifs compared whit the motifs of a mythical story or creature. due to the second step it's not logical to use this method for a number of photographers together it should be used for them one by one. therefore, in this thesis three American contemporary staged photographers have been studied; Arthur tress, joel-peter witkin, Gregory crewdson. for all three photographers the hypothesis was supported and the hidden mythical motifs have been found .in addition, the motifs which were repeated in photographs of all three photographers were similar to a mythical story which shows some interesting similarities between them.
Key words: myth, mythoanalysis, gilbert Durand, staged photographer, American photographer, joel-peter witkin, Arthur tress, Gregory crewdson