Multiple Media and Interdisciplinary Practices

I see photography as both a science and an art. Being both was a concept I was informed about in relation to medicine at a launch of the Peninsula Medical School. A piece of research was presented to demonstrate the holistic apprach taken in their teaching and was their unique selling point in comparison to other medical schools. The study featured a photograph of a blues sky with white fluffy clouds over a blue sea and in the foreground a green lawn leading to a wooden bench facing the sea view. Three groups were asked to say what they could see. Doctors saw the bench, lichenologists the lichen on the bench and artists the whole scene with all the colours therein. The same differences applied to cells in a petri dish with doctors seeing the abnormal cells, the lichenologists all cells and the artists all cells and the blood and other tissues surrounding the cells. I apologise for not having the reference or the original photo but as you can see it made an impression on me! I feel photography has the ability with current technology to capture all details in a scene and to present images in various forms depending on the intended audience and purpose. The extent to which they achieve their intended purpose will depend not only on the skills of the photographer in taking and producing the work but their own opinions and viewpoints. These in turn will be governed by their own upbringings, studies and interests as well as current social influences and pressures thereby bringing in unconscious bias. So for me there are many influences including those we are not intentionally aware of.

As mentioned above unfortunately I do not have a reference for this research and would be pleased if someone is aware of it and could provide a link for me to post (as well as enabling me to follow up on subsequent work in this area!)

9 Jun 2017  at 16:38