Doctoral candidate Kevin Miles has been awarded Dean’s List for Exceptional Theses

Congratulations to our doctoral candidate Kevin Miles who has been awarded Dean’s List for Exceptional Theses for his PhD “Along the Waterline: Cameraless Photography and the Haptic Register of Nocturnal Seaborne Activity.” 

Kevin Miles has situated his research within the personal confines of his life aboard his sailing boat moored at Wellington’s ‘downtown’ Chaffers Marina. His creative based research has utilised the practice of ‘cameraless photography’ where photographic materials (film, photo paper etc) are used directly to record experience and phenomena aboard ship!

He avoids the normal interface of the camera and lens that usually allows us to create photographic imagery. His extraordinary and evocative images record the very direct realities of manipulating photo sensitive materials in the dead of night aboard an often turbulent Wellington sea.

Miles states: My research explores the aesthetic and ecstatic potential of cameraless photography……. I engage the skinlike sensitivity of photographic materials to the place phenomena and materiality of seaborne sites and activities.…..I expand contemporary understanding of how cameraless photography can be defined as a post-phenomenological aesthetic (from thesis abstract).

The Dean’s list is for theses that show outstanding research, analytical content, communication and presentation. Candidates who make the Dean’s list are considered among the best in their fields.