Abstract:
This thesis examines photographic images which document human adult males sleeping during the day with explicit claims to authenticity (real people framed and fixed in real life situations), and their associated social, cultural and political contexts in having been exhibited in the contemporary art world in the first decade of the twenty-first century. The areas of focus of this thesis are the expressed intentions of the photographers in their relationship to their photographed subjects and the approaches taken in capturing and sharing their photographic images of sleeping subjects. This includes the situations and methods by which the images were captured, their subsequent use in the production of photographic works to be projected within specific contemporary art world exhibition sites, and their ongoing subsequent re-exhibition and dissemination in the current global information age. Three case studies are discussed in light of power relationships involved and the ethical implications of being witnessed and recorded, particularly in terms of dignity and respect for vulnerable individuals and issues around informed consent and autonomy - or complete lack of it, the precarious possibilities for control of self-image and informational privacy in the use of documentary images of identifiable real-life human beings in the contemporary art world, and more broadly, in the current global information age.
