| dc.description.abstract | Since photography was invented, it has been related with recording Nature. However, the Pictorialists used hand-crafted techniques and soft-focus lenses to offset the objectivity of pictures. They also introduced some artistic subjects into their works. These photographic skills were put to good use by American photographer Fred Holland Day (1864-1933), and his pictures are rich in black-and-white tones. Day strove to explore the relationships between photography and painting. When it comes to the history of photography, Day’s artistic achievement may not be superior to his competitor Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946). His works have been examined in the context of gender study since the twentieth-century, focusing on his homosexual sentiment. This thesis concentrates on the imagery of the male body in Day’s works, and investigates the bonds between his photography and the formal elements of paintings by means of comparative analysis. As a publisher, Day has an opportunity to be associated with the writers and artists in his time. Their thoughts and works benefit the development of his photographic aesthetics. On the one hand, Day chose the male body as a subject, as it related to his philanthropic career; on the other hand, he tried to find some similarities between photography and painting. Day represented religious or mythical figures by dressing up as Christ, Hypnos, Saint Sebastian and Orpheus. Meanwhile, these figures were the ideal subjects among Symbolist artists.
In the first chapter, I trace Day’s life and artistic formation; it involves his relations to Pictorialism and the Lincked Ring Brotherhood. Focused on Day’s early pictures, I discuss the connection between his photographic ideas and works. I also analyze his unique ways to represent the issue of sexuality, and the stylistic differences between his photographs and those of other pictorialists. In chapter two, I stress on Day’s series of sacred subjects. He played Christ and cast the youth as Sebastian, trying to prove that photography can represent sacred art. His strategies differ from the scientific pictures at that time. The third chapter pays attention to Day’s works after 1904; these pictures were mostly taken in the natural surroundings. The youths were dressed up like mythical figures such as Orpheus, freeing themselves from their social class or identity. Performance was a means to prove the idea of art for art’s sake, rather than as a way for social reform. Searching for the expressive possibilities in the realm of male body, Day’s art manifests a photographer’s subjectivity. His legacy also inspires contemporary artists nowadays. | en_US |