McGhie, H., 2024.

De-masculinising Astrophotography

My paper will share my experience as a female practice-based researcher working in partnership with Kielder Observatory (KOAS), Northumberland to find new ways of visualising dark skies, disrupting an official history of Astrophotography (Holborn, 2019) that emerged from 'male pioneers' including Draper, Whipple and Herschel. My work offers alternative stories of dwelling under dark skies from a woman's perspective to disrupt these histories, shedding light on hidden, female encounters with dark skies through arts-based research (Leavy, 2020) and creative reflective practice (Candy, 2019).

Practice-based research was conducted in two phases; I created images (portraits, landscapes, still lives) before displaying them to diverse audiences--including KOAS astronomers--in two contexts; the first at Sunderland Museum and Winter Garden (NEPN, 2019-20) informed the second outdoor display at Kielder Forest (Kielder Observatory, 2022). The same images were displayed; in the museum, I used a traditional framed/mounted display; outdoors, large-scale banners were tied to trees accompanied by 'sonified photography', 'eerie' audio made from photographic data, shifting science-communication from a rational narrative to an imaginative, disconcerting encounter.

Whilst disrupting the conventions of historic and contemporary Astrophotography practice, originally made to 'objectively' collect light as an image, my images focused on the density of darkness and my experience of the irrational night. Photographic outcomes were ongoing, 'performing' differently in each site. In Sunderland Museum--a place of knowledge setup by a local male society--my perspective proposed a new, de-masculinised vision. Dialogical encounters with audiences--including male astronomers--invited the 'spectator to take part' (Azoulay, 2008) with image outcomes through live debates where new knowledge was gathered, through stakeholder responses to my proposed, alternative visualisation. This shifted thought beyond valued traditions of Astrophotography as a sublime construction (Kessler, 2012), to personal, de-masculinised explorations of cosmic darkness, based on memory, encounter, fear and fascination.


References:

Azoulay, A. (2008) The civil contract of photography. New York: Zone Books.
Candy, L. (2019) The Creative Reflective Practitioner: Research Through Making and Practice. London: Routledge
Holborn, M. (2019) Sun and Moon: A Story of Astronomy, Photography and Cartography. Illustrated edition. London: Phaidon Press.
Kessler, E. (2012) Picturing the cosmos: Hubble Space Telescope images and the astronomical sublime. Minneapolis, Minn, Bristol: University of Minnesota Press
Kielder Observatory (2022) Another Dimension outdoor photography exhibit. Available at: https://kielderobservatory.org/news/latest-news/235-another-dimension-outdoor-photography-exhibit (Accessed: 26 April 2023).
Leavy, P. (2020) Method meets art: arts-based research practice. Third edition. New York: The Guilford Press.
NEPN (2019) Observe Experiment Archive. Available at: https://northeastphoto.net/project/observe-experiment-archive/ (Accessed: 26 April 2023).