Jason Bate: 20th Century Art & Design MA graduate
MA 20th Century Art & Design: Histories & Theories
Coming from a fine-art background, I have always had an interest in visual communication. After graduating from my first degree in 1998, I focused on working with photography. I developed a keen interest in old printing processes, such as salt prints and cyanotypes, as a way of outputting my visual work.
In 2001 I started the PgDip/MA in 20th Century Art & Design at Falmouth. This was initially a way to broaden and enrich my practical work. I also began teaching photography part-time in the same year, developing a passionate interest in the critical theory and pedagogy of photography history.
Through my MA I became interested in medical photographs. I found the subject of the traumatic, disfigured and injured body a challenging concept, that has been marginalised in photographic history. The photographs that I deal with (images of soldiers who were badly injured during the First World War) reside within medical discourse, and at the limits of photographic communication. This produces a crisis of looking when viewed outside of their original context.
In 2007 I started a PhD to explore these issues, focusing on archival photographs of facial injuries. These display before and after shots of wounded soldiers and their surgical reconstruction. The images were produced to document the horrific facial injuries caused by trench warfare, and as records to aid surgery techniques and rehabilitation. I will apply and critique Foucault’s framework of the medical gaze and its power relations to analyse these photographs, and their potential meanings.
For the last two years I have been teaching forensic photography. The experiences and knowledge I have gained will support my PhD studies.
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