Helen Westgeest – författare

This study demonstrates the significance of using contemporary art in scholarly debates about cultural aspects of skin, in particular “whiteness” as a phenomenon that is both overly visible and invisible.There is a need for a study of these artists’ strategies, which consist of drawing attention to whiteness by means of making whiteness “strange” through alternative visibilities. By increasing skin awareness, the selected socio-critical artworks also pertain to fostering visual literacy as another important contemporary concern. Chapters mainly focus on recent artworks that address ongoing skin-related debates in countries in Europe and North America, rooted in histories of ideology of white supremacy. Moreover, these artworks critically reflect on the alleged superiority of the history of Western European painting, including a focus on the representation of pale skin as model of beauty.The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, race and ethnicity studies, and cultural studies.

This study demonstrates the significance of using contemporary art in scholarly debates about cultural aspects of skin, in particular “whiteness” as a phenomenon that is both overly visible and invisible.There is a need for a study of these artists’ strategies, which consist of drawing attention to whiteness by means of making whiteness “strange” through alternative visibilities. By increasing skin awareness, the selected socio-critical artworks also pertain to fostering visual literacy as another important contemporary concern. Chapters mainly focus on recent artworks that address ongoing skin-related debates in countries in Europe and North America, rooted in histories of ideology of white supremacy. Moreover, these artworks critically reflect on the alleged superiority of the history of Western European painting, including a focus on the representation of pale skin as model of beauty.The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, race and ethnicity studies, and cultural studies.

Video Art Theory: A Comparative Approach demonstrates how video art functions on the basis of a comparative media approach, providing a crucial understanding of video as a medium in contemporary art and of the visual mediations we encounter in daily life. A critical investigation of the visual media and selected video artworks which contributes to the understanding of video as a medium in contemporary artThe only study specifically devoted to theorizing the medium of video from the perspective of prominent characteristics which result from how video works deal with time, space, representation, and narrativeThe text has emerged out of the author’s own lectures and seminars on video artOffers a comparative approach which students find especially useful, offering new perspectives

The abundance of images in our everyday lives—and the speed at which they are consumed—seems to have left us unable to critique them. To rectify this situation, artists such as Daniel Richter, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, and Artur Zmijewski have demonstrated that painting is brilliantly equipped to produce ‘slow images’ that enable, encourage and reward reflection. In this book, Helen Westgeest attempts to understand how various forms of slow painting can be used as tools to interrogate the visual mediations we encounter daily. Painting was expected to disappear in the digital age but, through interactive painting performances and painting-like manipulated photographs and videos, Westgeest shows how photography, video and new media art have themselves developed the visual strategies that painting had already mastered. Moreover, the fleeting nature of digital mass media appears to have unlocked a desire for more physically stable and enduring pictures, like paintings. Slow Painting charts how, in a world where the constant quest for speed can leave us exhausted, the appeal of this ‘slower medium’ has only grown.

Photography Theory in Historical Perspective: Case Studies from Contemporary Art aims to contribute to the understanding of the multifaceted and complex character of the photographic medium by dealing with various case studies selected from photographic practices in contemporary art, discussed in the context of views and theories of photography from its inception. uses case studies to explain photographic practices in contemporary art and place them in the context of theorypresents current debates on theory of photography through comparisons to research of other visual mediaapplicable to vernacular and documentary photography as well as art photography

This book explores the potential of specific photographic images for reflecting on experiences of mental disorders.

This book explores the potential of specific photographic images for reflecting on experiences of mental disorders.

While it has traditionally been seen as a means of documenting an external reality or expressing an internal feeling, photography is now capable of actualizing never-existed pasts and never-lived experiences. Thanks to the latest photographic technologies, we can now take photos in computer games, interpolate them in extended reality platforms, or synthesize them via artificial intelligence. To account for the most recent shifts in conceptualizations of photography, this book proposes the term virtual photography as a binding theoretical framework, defined as a photography that retains the efficiency and function of real photography (made with or without a camera) while manifesting these in an unfamiliar or noncustomary form.

Whether one is in front of the camera or behind it, inside their home or outside their house, photographs have proven indispensable in probing into the idea of home. In a time when displacement, migration, and homelessness have become commonplace due to geopolitical conflicts and oppressive ideologies, the role of photography in exploring the process of homemaking has become an irrefutable fact of sociopolitical debates. With that in mind, how can a representational medium deal with home as something that is not necessarily limited to the photographic frame? In other words, can photography embody the emotional and interpersonal aspects of home as well as participate in the social, political, and cultural debates on homemaking?Echoing the word photography, which is a compound of phōtós (light) and graphé (writing/drawing), this book defines "oikography" (oikos graphé) as "homemaking through photography". Following the same logic, it considers "oikographs" as photographs whose principal function is twofold: reflecting on the idea of home and dwelling on the process of homemaking. With the concept of home at its methodological and theoretical core, Oikography aims to show how photography envisages, embodies and apperceives home as a spatial idea, regardless of whether that space is idealized or ideologized, ontologized or theorized, materialized or dematerialized, territorialized or deterritorialized, or internalized within us or externalized around us. To this end, Oikography asks: How can photography represent the lived, perceived, and conceived experiences of homemaking?

Video Art Theory: A Comparative Approach demonstrates how video art functions on the basis of a comparative media approach, providing a crucial understanding of video as a medium in contemporary art and of the visual mediations we encounter in daily life. A critical investigation of the visual media and selected video artworks which contributes to the understanding of video as a medium in contemporary artThe only study specifically devoted to theorizing the medium of video from the perspective of prominent characteristics which result from how video works deal with time, space, representation, and narrativeThe text has emerged out of the author’s own lectures and seminars on video artOffers a comparative approach which students find especially useful, offering new perspectives