VP Views of Paradise (Oceania)

Views of Paradise (Oceania), 2017. Artist’s book and PhD thesis.

Views of Paradise: a photographic atlas of the artificial environments of zoological gardens and aquariums in Oceania,
photographic series and artist’s book, 2014 - 2018.

http://hdl.handle.net/2123/17552

In 2014, I won a full scholarship to study for a PhD in Visual Arts at the University of Sydney / Sydney College of the Arts, Australia, with the project
Views of Paradise: a photographic atlas of the artificial environments of zoos and aquariums in Oceania, an ethnographic project to study the representations of landscapes in the three-dimensional space of enclosures from 82 zoos and aquariums in Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea. This project compares the artificial landscapes of zoos and aquariums with the natural landscapes of this continent; it proposes the artist’s book
(or photo book) as the ideal format for publishing research in photography; it investigates and proposes a sculptural (or three-dimensional) practice through photography; and finally, it positions the zoo in relation to the concepts of paradise, utopia, dystopia, and heterotopia.