UC Irvine

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

Origin[Redux]

Photography as a Mechanism of Dream Transference

By

Joaquín Palting

Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art

University of California, Irvine, 2020

Professor Simon Leung, Chair

What is it that I am doing when I take a photograph? What are the implications when I exhibit the work? Expanding upon theories advanced by Sigmund Freud in his writing on dreams and the unconscious, as well as what Walter Benjamin referred to as the "optical unconscious”, this thesis explores the idea that when I take a photograph, I am making a visual record of a dream. Furthermore, that when I exhibit the photograph, the dream that I recorded is then transferred to the viewers via the unconscious.

As a case study, we will examine a series of photographs titled, Origin[Redux], which I created for my MFA thesis exhibition. The argument will be made that the photographs may, in part, include shared dreams that have moved between myself, my mother, Brett Weston and his father Edward Weston.