Exhibition Installation View

Work of art in archival inkjet prints by artist Kendra Smith as part of a 2019 MFA Exhibition, entitled "The Walk".
Date: April 4, 2019
Creator: Smith, Kendra
Object Type: Artwork
System: The UNT Digital Library

Pole Shadows Sun Dial - Detail

Work of art in archival inkjet prints (64 prints each 4 x 6 inches) by artist Kendra Smith as part of a 2019 MFA Exhibition, entitled "The Walk".
Date: April 4, 2019
Creator: Smith, Kendra
Object Type: Artwork
System: The UNT Digital Library

Exhibition Installation View

Work of art in archival inkjet prints (various sizes) by artist Kendra Smith as part of a 2019 MFA Exhibition, entitled "The Walk".
Date: 2018/2019
Creator: Smith, Kendra
Object Type: Artwork
System: The UNT Digital Library

Exhibition Installation View

Work of art in archival inkjet prints by artist Kendra Smith as part of a 2019 MFA Exhibition, entitled "The Walk".
Date: April 4, 2019
Creator: Smith, Kendra
Object Type: Artwork
System: The UNT Digital Library
Beads on a String: Extended Portraits (open access)

Beads on a String: Extended Portraits

When I was first introduced to photography, I was mainly drawn to landscape imagery. I enjoyed being a solitary spectator. Over time, inclusions of figurative elements became more and more apparent in my work. I purposefully began to incorporate a figure into my landscapes, ascribing to it a certain nostalgia and a sense of isolation I was experiencing on many levels at that time. Before long, I felt disconnected from these images because of their ambiguity and generalization. I found myself craving more content and personal commitment in my photography. At the end 2003, I started experimenting with a 4" x 5" format camera, which forced me, to some extent, to change my way of photographing and seeing. That is how the beginning of this new body of work was born. I was accustomed to shooting with a 35 mm camera, which allowed me to be spontaneous, quick and immediate. I permanently switched to a large format. I could see myself benefiting from this change. I lost some of the spontaneity that a 35 mm format offers but I gained the beauty of working with larger negatives and the endless possibilities of view camera movements. Thanks to this technical transformation, …
Date: December 2004
Creator: Kolčavová, Gabriela
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Where I am From, Finding My Identity Through Visualizing Memories (open access)

Where I am From, Finding My Identity Through Visualizing Memories

This article discusses about the author’s identity related to the experience of being in the United States for one third of his life, and away from his native country, Japan. He uses photographic images as a tool for finding his identity. Those images are combined and painted with paraffin wax as finished pieces. The extra layer of wax on the photographic surface is treated as a metaphor for the fuzziness of memories and dreams, as well as a boundary, which lies between author’s two familiar spaces, the United States and Japan. His visual influences are shown to include photographer Henri Cartier- Bresson, painter Giorgio de Chirico, and sculptor Alberto Giacometti.
Date: August 2001
Creator: Itoi, Jun
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
From Inside the Home: A Portrait of Mexican Immigrant Women (open access)

From Inside the Home: A Portrait of Mexican Immigrant Women

For the past two years my artwork has focused on the cultural issues of a Mexican immigrant community in Fort Worth, Texas. The primary focus has been women and the way in which their homes reflect their blending of two cultures. The occupants of the homes are people that I know personally, including my immediate and extended family as well as friends of my family. Undocumented women usually have the most difficulty in adjusting. Although some do work outside of the home, many of these women spend countless hours inside due to their inability to speak English or drive. These women have little hope of returning to their homeland because their children are being raised in the United States. In order to feel more at home, the women make every effort to re-create the Mexican culture in their new houses. Thus, acculturation takes place with very little cultural loss. Instead of previous strategies of total assimilation, these women blend the two cultures, making it easier to adjust to their new lives.
Date: May 2001
Creator: Murillo, Guadalupe
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Realismo Magico Digital: An Exploration of Self-Identity (open access)

Realismo Magico Digital: An Exploration of Self-Identity

The internal necessity to rediscover myself constantly drives me back to the country where I spent most of my life, Mexico. I was born and raised in the heart of the world's largest metropolis, Mexico City and through the years I have photographed in locations with important significance for Mexican culture as well as for my personal history. I reorganize and reinvent these places, and by staging models there, I construct my personal interpretation of the Mexican way of life involving the world of “manana” (tomorrow) with its “dictadura perfecta” (perfect dictatorship), where opposite and contradictory situations exist side by side. I am particularly interested in the relationship between people and their environ-ment and I use this theme as a means to explore my own identity as a Mexican. One strategy involves juxtaposing cultural signifiers of Mexican culture. My images are an examination and a projection of my ideals, fears, and dreams about my country and myself.
Date: May 2001
Creator: Mateos, Cesar Augusto
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

[View of Installation Title for "Beauty Remains" MFA Exhibition]

Work of art in digital image by artist Megan A. DeSoto as part of a 2019 MFA Exhibition, entitled "Beauty Remains, Object Portraiture"
Date: 2019
Creator: DeSoto, Megan A.
Object Type: Artwork
System: The UNT Digital Library
Floating Life (open access)

Floating Life

Photography, as a way of recording, is often high-definition and highly descriptive. Therefore, photography has a close relationship with visual perception. In my soft and abstract photographic images, the particularity of time and place is deliberately diluted, and the traditional objects in the photographic images are eliminated to challenge the viewer to locate themselves in relation to the photographs. The ambiguity of the photograph stimulates the viewer's self-consciousness to the greatest extent, while also spurring profound examination of the particular ways one expects photographs to affect them.
Date: May 2020
Creator: Ning, Siyu
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Fragmenting Time (open access)

Fragmenting Time

Brief Artist Statement by Shellita Tow as part of a 2021 MFA Exhibition, entitled "Fragmenting Time” in the Cora Stafford Gallery on the campus of the University of North Texas on April 15-20, 2021.
Date: May 2021
Creator: Tow, Shellita
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Walk (open access)

The Walk

Artist Statement from the MFA Exhibition: "Photography lets one be a participant as a viewer and recorder of moments in the space around them. The impulse to capture moments is felt as urgent in our current social atmosphere, and the act of image making to depict true reflection and sense of the space around us seems to have gotten lost. My intention is to observe and make imagery of temporal details I see in place. Through the process of a walk, I emphasize being present in my current space and moment. Walking is an independent, autonomous action that allows one to witness, freeze and appreciate instances in time and place. The curiosity that sets a body in motion while walking lets the observer detect variation in a situation, and to never see the same thin g twice. My work presents glimpses of individual human trace, as well as transient marks seen in nature that one might miss because of the ephemerality of place and moment. It portrays awareness of the environment and expresses interest with the unknowns of life around us. By walking to observe my surroundings, I allow myself to discover hints of others’ lives, and to contemplate the …
Date: May 2019
Creator: Smith, Kendra
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Beauty Remains, Object Portraiture (open access)

Beauty Remains, Object Portraiture

Artist Statement from the MFA Exhibition: "This body of work contains digital photographs, sculptures and wallpapers to highlight a personal journey through motherhood. Traditionally, the roles of a new mother have been handed down from generation to generation. A mother teaches her daughter how to soothe her fussy infant, her domestic responsibilities, to maintain her feminine mystique. Though many of these traditions of mouth to ear to mouth familial heritage continue, today’s society inundated women with visual language to remind them that although they can challenge the traditions and their choice to participate, those same discarded ideals of how to act or perform will continue to tug at the shoulder. "
Date: May 2019
Creator: DeSoto, Megan A.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Te Digo Que Lo Llevo En La Sangre (open access)

Te Digo Que Lo Llevo En La Sangre

This work is a developing portrait of women workers who are involved in labor rights advocacy within the context of the maquiladora (assemblage factory) industry in Mexico. I have traveled to do research in Mexico by making photographs and through collecting recorded testimonies from the women workers I come to meet through an organization called the Comité Fronterizo de Obreras. The resulting artwork I make includes photographs, handmade books, video, sculpture and works on paper. Ultimately, my translation of the empowerment and stories of these women workers into works of art are at the center of my practice.
Date: May 2020
Creator: Gamez-Herrera, Melissa
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library

Skin Deep

With this work, I investigate the mental and physical toll of the past and the dissonance that often occurs as we age through the use of experimental cameraless techniques. By placing photographic materials directly against my skin during performative acts of self-care, I document my body as I reflect on the damage it suffered as a result of my childhood as a competitive gymnast, which is being exacerbated by the effects of age and time. The resulting photographs are a poetic self-reflection on my physical form that embodies my struggle to understand and accept my deteriorating body.
Date: May 2020
Creator: Gerhart, Stephanie
Object Type: Artwork
System: The UNT Digital Library
Industrial Landscapes: Humanity Coexisting with Nature (open access)

Industrial Landscapes: Humanity Coexisting with Nature

The focus of this project was on creating images of our industrial landscape and shows the coexistence of culture and nature. I confronted the landscape from a position that is accepting of our present landscape. While not idealizing the present industrial landscape I wanted to depict it in a way that is not devoid of beauty. I believe that no matter how the land is altered a certain grace still comes through in any landscape. In not idealizing or criticizing I wanted to show industrial areas in an accepting light and reveal the grace and beauty that is within every landscape. It is through my photographs and all the subjective decisions made when creating these images that make it possible for others to see the beauty in these industrial landscapes.
Date: May 2003
Creator: Espey, Benjamin
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Experiencing the view. (open access)

Experiencing the view.

This article discusses the way people experience the landscape. Tracing the progress of landscape photography from the late nineteenth century to the present, the author introduces the way concepts in landscape photography have changed. The author's photographs are discussed regarding how they build on the foundation of this historical precedent. Using photographs of individuals at places they think are special, the author examines their perception of landscape. The positions and actions of the subjects shape the way their attitudes are conveyed. The concept of beauty is discussed as it relates to the appreciation of landscape. By discussing with the subjects why these places are special and photographing with the intent to convey what those reasons are, the author's photographs examine the relationship of people to the landscape.
Date: May 2003
Creator: Madsen, Michael J.
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library

Exhibition Installation View

Work of art in archival inkjet prints by artist Kendra Smith as part of a 2019 MFA Exhibition, entitled "The Walk".
Date: April 4, 2019
Creator: Smith, Kendra
Object Type: Artwork
System: The UNT Digital Library

Exhibition Installation View

Work of art in archival inkjet prints by artist Kendra Smith as part of a 2019 MFA Exhibition, entitled "The Walk".
Date: April 4, 2019
Creator: Smith, Kendra
Object Type: Artwork
System: The UNT Digital Library