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In Ruins: Nostalgia and Melancholia in the Photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, 2005-2013

Flagg, Tracy Claire
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1396533009

Abstract Details

2014, MA, University of Cincinnati, Design, Architecture, Art and Planning: Art History.
Since 2005, photographers Yves Marchand (b. 1981) and Romain Meffre (b. 1987) have produced a large portfolio of photographs made from urban ruins in the United States and Japan and produced three major bodies of work: The Ruins of Detroit (Steidl, 2010), a book about Detroit’s abandoned buildings; Gunkanjima (Steidl, 2013), a book examining an abandoned Japanese coal mining island; and “Theaters,” an online collection-in-progress of photographs of the remains of early twentieth-century American cinemas and stage theaters. Despite a straightforward approach to photographing their subjects, Marchand and Meffre express nostalgia in their images through the strategic repetition of certain motifs. They eschew sociopolitical concerns in their photographs and instead create poignant testimonials to the past. Throughout their body of work, they succeed in imparting their philosophy relating to the life cycles of ruins and societies through an ostensibly documentary mode of photographing. Marchand and Meffre’s portfolio is a case study of an aesthetic that is gaining popularity because of the popular cultural phenomenon in recent years of urban exploration, or “urbex.” Many practitioners of urban decay photography produce such images simply to record their exploration. Although some critics deprecate images like these as “ruin porn”—aestheticization lacking in theoretical depth—Marchand and Meffre’s photographs provide moving philosophical interpretations of abandoned spaces. Marchand and Meffre profess a belief in a powerful correlation between individual tendencies and the nature of societies. The impermanence demonstrated by ruins is, in their view, a representation of the predispositions of human nature. To them, ruins are the physical legacy of the ideas and values of societies. Their photographs demonstrate the decay of matter and the impermanence inherent in that which we construct upon the earth. Through their sensitivity to the concepts of time and ephemerality, interest in the aesthetic and sociological import of the architecture of societies, and pictorial and theoretical affiliations with canonical artists such as Jean Dubuffet (1901-1985), Eugene Atget (1857-1927), Andre Kertesz (1894-1985), Walker Evans (1903-1975), and Aaron Siskind (1903-1991), as well as contemporary artists Robert Polidori (b. 1951), Camilo Jose Vergara (b. 1944), Andrew Moore (b. 1957), Mathew Merrett (b. 1960), Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1948), Hollis Hammonds (b. 1971), and Tacita Dean (b. 1965), Marchand and Meffre demonstrate their pronounced sophistication in depicting urban ruins. Through the use of icons such as the clock and window, the theater, and the calendar; motifs of personal belongings and handheld or manipulated objects; and references to time, cycles, and spectacle, Marchand and Meffre evoke nostalgia and melancholia throughout their entire body of documentary photographs. Although their three bodies of work feature very different subject matter, they are philosophically united by the photographers’ metaphorical inferences.
Theresa Leininger-Miller, Ph.D. (Committee Chair)
Morgan Thomas, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Maia Toteva, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
114 p.
Art History
Yves Marchand; Romain Meffre; Detroit; Gunkanjima; ruins; documentary photography

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Flagg, T. C. (2014). In Ruins: Nostalgia and Melancholia in the Photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, 2005-2013 [Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1396533009

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Flagg, Tracy. In Ruins: Nostalgia and Melancholia in the Photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, 2005-2013. 2014. University of Cincinnati, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1396533009.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Flagg, Tracy. "In Ruins: Nostalgia and Melancholia in the Photographs of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, 2005-2013." Master's thesis, University of Cincinnati, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1396533009

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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