Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1 photography, faculty of visual arts, art University, Tehran, Iran
2 photography department, faculty of visual arts, art university, tehran, iran
Abstract
From the perspective of mythologists in the fields of art and literature, the mythical study of art or literature works would be the most beneficial kind of studies because by decoding mythical parts of them the most essential parts of them would be realized. In this way the mythoanalysis method of gilbert Durand is a mythological method of analyzing art or literature works with the purpose of identifying the same roots of contemporary artworks and myths created by ancient people. By using this method some reasons would be found for repetitive motifs in artist works except the reasons depend on artist life experience. In other words, this method search the reason of repeating one motif in archetypes and collective unconsciousness. So the hypothesis is that mythical scenes and motifs are hidden in today photographic pictures which are coming from artist unconscious. therefore American staged photographer; Gregory crewdson whose photos have a reputation for being imaginary is a good choice for this kind of studies. In this paper mythoanalysis of gilbert Durand would be used to analyze crewdson photos in order to identify mythical scenes and motifs in them. This method has three steps at first repetitive motifs should be found and at next step by studying social or political circumstances some of that motifs would be considered as reaction to the circumstances in addition some of the motifs would be the reactions to the artistic atmosphere of era. Finally in third step the motifs which are probably coming from artist's pure imagination all together can form a network of metaphors and symbolic meanings which is similar to a mythical network, story or creature. In this paper three steps have done and At last discoveries show that Hecate is mythical creature which is hidden in crewdson works and is represented unconsciously in some motifs which are repeating without any special external reason. For instance, crossroads are repeating in Crewdson photographs and Hecate is the goddess of crossroads and her sculpture prayd in crossroads. Also Hecate has two different faces one of them is the face of night and scare and the other one is a helper for pregnant women amazingly in crewdson photos two different face is shown for women one of them is pregnant and the other one is mysterious and frightening. In addition to this two similarities some other ones discovered so the similarity between the network of unconsciously repetitive motifs in crewdson's photos and Hecate shows that hypothesis is true about this photographer and this method help to find new points of views about his photographs because usually in psychoanalysis of his photos some personal reasons and his memories had been used to interpret his works but know some archetypes which are shared between all the people in all eras and locations can be used to interpret photographs of this contemporary artist.
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