The Effects of Modes of Photographic Presentation on Understanding of Environmental Art

Environmental art is the leading comprehensive impression of the numerous global manifestations of new type of art, and the philosophical, geographical, and cultural settings from which it arose. The environmental artist tries to escape from the dark, noisy and small environments of the galleries. They are interested in seeking refuge and protection in the earth and nature and to be able to make a link and a dialogue with it. So, photography has a crucial function in the dissemination of environmental art. It is owing to an assortment of interrelated parameters, which are all originating from the detachment of land works. Thus, for introducing environmental art to the people, photography should be used. Furthermore, visual records in magazines, books, and a few films can lead to its publicity. This research seriously explores the role of photography as a significant medium to record environmental art. Since environmental artists make changes in structure and the materials existing in their surroundings to create their works; it’s impossible to move these works into enclosed gallery spaces. Thus, photography medium accompanied by videos recorded from the process of forming environmental artworks has always been beside artists as a proof for the work implemented. The objectives of the present research are to answer these significant questions that: 1. Could photography as a medium have a good performance to introduce environmental artworks to the audience? 2. Which photography angel can have the highest influence on viewer to receive and realize the messages and signs embedded in environmental artwork? 3. Is there any significant difference in perception, concept realization and knowing pictorial symbols embedded in environmental art photos between female and male students? This research is based on Gestalt theory (1988) in photography. The method of this research was quantitative and a random sampling method was used to select the technical and vocational art universities, so that all students in the universities have the same possibility of being selected. Randomly two universities have been selected from the four public art universities in Iran, Tehran with a sample of 120 graphic art students in the third or fourth year. The instrumentation comprises a set of multiple choice test questions for the respondents and the open-ended questionnaire due to the varied nature of the artworks and to avoid prompting students to the possible answers and responses. The open-ended questionnaire consists of six questions and one photo for group A and group B. The photos given to each of the group A and B members were different in terms of the angles (close-up & long shot). While the questionnaires offered to group C included both photo types (close-up & long shot) of the selected projects which were the same as the ones given to group A and B. There were total of ten photos that displayed the prominent works of six famous Iranian land artists. Moreover, the analyses were accomplished through various statistical techniques, for instance the one- way analysis of covariance (one-way ANOVA), Tukey test and Skewness & kurtosis. The data were treated statistically using SPSS software (Version 20). The results revealed that the mixed presentation method produced significantly better results for Total Overall scores and sub-factors of message understanding, identifying and interpreting symbols. The results also showed that there were significant differences by gender and modes of presentation for the sub-factors of understanding of messages, identifying and interpreting symbols. It means, the result of research indicated that there is a significant difference in perception, concept realization and knowing pictorial symbols embedded in environmental art photos between female and male students. Female students were able to perceive and identify features of artworks and receive artist’s messages, observing every single photo separately, while unlike them, based on their mental and cognitive structure, male students needed to look at both of the photographs in both close-up and long-shot modes simultaneously to identify the concepts within photographs of environmental artworks. The research findings also show that looking at only a single recorded photography frame is not sufficient to perceive and recognize an environmental artwork. Therefore, showing photos in both close-up and long-shot modes and even photos from more angles and in different weather conditions as well as different times of the day, is most influential in preventing the viewers from getting misled in identifying and perceiving signs and concepts which are embedded in photos shown to them.