Magic Realism In Photography

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the history of the definitions of magic realism. It specifically focuses on magic realism within photography and if the term can be applied to specific forms of photography. The paper discusses the medium of photography and how the writer uses this medium. It also looks briefly at digital photography, as well as black and white photography.

From the Paper:

" It is very difficult to apply the term magic realism to photography of any kind; perhaps because it seems that every kind of photography may be capable of being magic realism. Since the meaning of the term has come to encompass so many definitions, there is an argument for many kinds of photographs to be considered as magic realist photographs. In my photography, I truly want to infuse the logical even "normal" world with something as illogical as a state of mind, an imagination. By still using a representational language to do so, I believe my photographs can fit into the Roh and Hartlaub description of magic realism as well as the Carpentier and Uslar-Pietri description. It is possible to use objectifiable or representational art rather than abstract art to express a part of human reality. It may seem that the objective world is "crystallized" by a photograph, but the crystalline structure of a real external situation is easily fractured by the tiniest suggestion of an internal or psychological reality; the latter is in fact strengthened by the cold and certain detail of the former."

Sample of Sources Used:

• An American Vision: Three Generations of Wyeth Art. Boston, 1987, Little Brown & Company.
• Corn, Wanda M. "The Art Of Andrew Wyeth." Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco.
• Karcher, Eva. Otto Dix 1891-1969: His Life and Works. 1988, Cologne, Benedikt Taschen.
• Knutson, Anne Classen. Andrew Wyeth Memory and Magic. 2006, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Rizzoli, NY.
• Parkinson, Louis. Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

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