Paintings of the future: photography in the digital age with particular reference to Andreas Gursky, Jeff Wall and their contemporaries
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The thesis investigates the oeuvre of Andreas Gursky, Jeff Wall and their contemporaries. It aims to provide an art-historical assessment, including the conceptual and philosophical context, complemented by an investigation of the production process of their photographs. One central focus is how the use of digital techniques and advanced printing technologies has affected their photographs. \n \nThe thesis provides a traditional descriptive investigation and comparison of the artworks discussed; in addition, it relates these photographs to other art genres and thereby offers broader connections to the art world. This modus operandi is enhanced by the inclusion of specific writings on the history and theory of photography, wherein neither the art genres nor the theoretical sources are subject to any temporal or chronological restrictions. \n \nThe thesis comprises six chapters: \nI. ‘What Happened to Baudelaire’s ‘Secretary’? The Role of Digital Technology in Contemporary Photography’ provides the theoretical framework for an understanding of photographic developments in the past, the influence of production processes, digital manipulation, perception and popular understanding of photographs. \nII. ‘Oscillating between Urmalerei and Urphotographie: Gursky’s Journey from Analogue to Digital’ examines Gursky’s use of analogue and digital photography through a number of case studies. \nIII. ‘Images of our Time: Jeff Wall, ‘a Painter of Modern Life’ investigates Wall’s artistic development, by focusing on his utilization of Baudelaire’s concept of ‘the Painter of Modern Life’. \nIV. ‘Photographic Nuances and Variations: Contemporary Photographers in Düsseldorf and Vancouver’ analyses the academic environment of Gursky and Wall and their fellow students. \nV. ‘Suspense or Surprise: At the Interface between Photographic Images and Film Stills’ looks at the impact of the film genre on photography, and considers similar and comparable aesthetic and stylistic elements. \nChapter VI provides a conclusion and a brief outlook in respect of photography.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.007 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".