Advisor/tutor: Hypatia Vourloumis
Arnhem, June 2018

Abstract

Questioning the notion ‘to capture’ something or someone, a term often used to describe what photography does, this thesis aims to find ways to create and share photographs and words that speak of the realms of illness, death, madness and loss, without imprisoning either the subject or the viewer.

In connection to my own practice as an artist working with photography and writing, thematically engaged in the aforementioned themes, I propose three verbs to unsettle capture: wording, haunting and dissolving. Each verb introduces a methodology for thinking and making that is simultaneously performed in the writing of this thesis itself, unfolding in relation to the photographs distributed throughout it. Through thinking together with a wide range of authors while continuously linking back to my own practice, this thesis concludes that in order to unsettle capture while speaking of illness, death, madness and loss, works of art must be alive, with an ability to haunt the viewer and maker, an ability to change and to dissolve into the life that continues beyond the margins of the work.