What ugly and beautiful photographs reveal about COVID‐19 lockdown experiences, everyday aesthetics and photography aesthetics

Abstract

Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted our daily (visual) experiences, we asked people to take an ugly and beautiful photograph from within their homes. In total, 284 photographs (142 ugly and 142 beautiful) and accompanying statements were submitted and brought to light an intimate portrait of how participants were experiencing their (lockdown) home environment. Results revealed an aesthetic preference for (living) nature. Beauty and ugliness were also connected to good versus bad views, mess versus cosiness, unflattering versus flattering portraits and positive versus negative (COVID-19) emotions. In terms of photography strategies, editing and colour were important for beautiful photographs, whereas a lack of effort and sharpness showed up relatively more in ugly photographs. A follow-up study revealed that other viewers' (n = 86) aesthetic judgements of the photographs were largely in line with the original submissions, and confirmed several of the themes. Overall, our study provides a unique photographic window on our everyday aesthetic experiences at home during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Mental imagery in aesthetic appreciation and the understanding of the self and others.

“…As aesthetic appreciation is an intensely subjective experience, the choice of visual artworks was expected to impact it. A more efficient way to understand the interaction between imagery and art appreciation might have been to ask participants to select a number of artworks that they do like and then use them to examine possible imagery-aesthetic appreciation links, an approach similar to the method of production suggested by Fechner (1876) and used in different studies (Felisberti, 2021(Felisberti, , 2022Vissers & Wagemans, 2022). Finally, a larger follow-up study is needed to confirm (or disambiguate) some of the findings in this study, since there were four separated datasets, some of which did not contain all the variables for each of the participants (see methods).…”

Photographs that repulse or entice: Sense-making and emotional experiencing of artistic photographs.

“…However, in the aforementioned exhibition study, we also found that beyond feeling moved and originality (predictive of both beauty and interest), meaningfulness and coherence of the photography series were predicting interest ratings (Vissers & Wagemans, 2021), indicating a role for more elaborate cognitive processes and meaning-making in aesthetic preferences of photographs. Furthermore, both the emotional aspects of photographs, and their meaning, came up as aesthetic strategies when people were asked to make their own ugly and beautiful photographs (during the COVID-19 lockdown; Vissers & Wagemans, 2023).…”

“…Here, it would be interesting to let the viewer explain a bit more about their thoughts, and emotional processes. Previous studies already showed the value of giving participants more space to express their own aesthetic experiences (e.g., by letting people make their own photographs, and reflect on them; Felisberti, 2022; Vissers & Wagemans, 2023). These same studies have also highlighted the importance of making space to study both sides of the aesthetic coin (ugliness, as well as beauty).…”

“…This project is part of a larger-scale research project (Vissers & Wagemans, 2021, Vissers & Wagemans, 2023) that centers around photographs of the high-level Life Framer photography competition, celebrating creative photography (https://www.life-framer.com). In particular, we focus on photographs from edition 2017 to 2018, including photographs from a variety of themes (one per month: Civilization, Street Life, World Travelers, The Human Body, An Instant, Colors, After Dark, Urban Life, Youthhood, Faces of Life, and two Open Calls), where each theme has been selected by an expert judge in the contemporary artistic photography scene (e.g., an artistic photographer, a curator, editor, gallery owner, etc.…”

“…Data collection for both studies took place in February 2019 in collective testing sessions in a reserved computer class of the University of Leuven. In these sessions, participants also took part in other tasks with other sets of the Life Framer photographs (e.g., Vissers & Wagemans, 2021, Vissers & Wagemans, 2023). The general procedure was therefore similar, but the specific tasks (and their order), photographs, and conditions differed between participants, and participants were allocated to conditions semi-randomly, depending on the session they attended and the computer in the testing room they decided to sit at.…”