Materiality as Meaning: A Critical Analysis of James Rhodes’ The Tangible Image
- May 21
- 4 min read
James Rhodes is a Newcastle interdisciplinary artist, researcher, and teacher at Newcastle Art School whose practice examines photography as a physical and spatial object rather than simply a two-dimensional image. In his doctoral thesis, The Tangible Image: Understanding What Materiality Means for Photographic Practice, Rhodes investigates how photographic meaning is shaped through material processes, including analogue photography, expired film, stitching, glass, mirrors, UV printing, and installation. His research is particularly relevant to contemporary practice because it challenges the idea that photography is only about representation. Instead, Rhodes positions the photograph as something constructed through touch, surface, weight, process, and display, not simply viewed. This makes his work useful for understanding how material choices can carry conceptual meaning within my own practice.
A central strength of Rhodes' argument is his challenge to the assumption that photography is primarily about representation. He does not deny that photographs contain images, but he insists that meaning is also carried through the material form of the work. This is important because it shifts photography away from being understood as a transparent record of reality. The photograph becomes an artefact shaped by process, intention, and physical intervention. In this way, Rhodes positions photography closer to painting, printmaking, sculpture, and installation, where surface, weight, texture, and spatial placement are part of the work's meaning.
His focus on analogue and hybrid processes is especially significant. By using expired film, instant film, UV printing, glass, mirrors, and sewn photographs, Rhodes demonstrates that photographic meaning can emerge through interruption and material instability. Grain, scratches, tearing, folding, and stitching are not treated as mistakes. Instead, they become active parts of the work. This approach is valuable because it allows the photograph to reveal its own construction. The image is no longer seamless or passive, exposing the physical decisions and disruptions that shaped it.
Rhodes' methodology also strengthens the thesis. His use of practice as research means that knowledge is generated through making. The studio becomes a site of testing, failure, revision, and discovery. This is important because the work is not made after the research has already been completed. Instead, the artwork produces research through process. His cyclical method of shooting, processing, analysing, critiquing, exhibiting, and repeating shows how artistic knowledge can develop through direct contact with materials. This validates experimentation as a critical method rather than a secondary activity.
Another important aspect of the thesis is Rhodes' discussion of gallery space. He argues that photographic objects are affected by the spaces in which they are displayed. The white cube gallery is not neutral. It frames the work, changes how audiences approach it, and gives the object a particular status. This is especially relevant in a digital age, where photographs are often consumed quickly on screens. Rhodes' work asks the viewer to slow down and encounter photography as something physical, spatial, and present.
There is also a limitation in Rhodes' approach. Because he deliberately focuses on materiality, subject matter is sometimes pushed into the background. This makes sense within the structure of his research, but it also creates a tension. If material and image work together, then the image content cannot be separated from the object. A damaged, stitched, or obscured photograph of a body will communicate differently from a damaged photograph of a landscape or object. The material process does not carry meaning alone; it is always shaped by what is being shown. This is where Rhodes' thesis becomes most useful for my own practice, because my work is concerned with both material process and embodied subject matter.
Rhodes' thinking connects strongly to my Techniques 5 body of work, Displacement Studies. In this work, identity is not presented as fixed, whole, or easily understood. It is fragmented through systems, repetition, movement, and obstruction. Rhodes' argument helps me understand that the structure of the work is not just a way of presenting an image; it is part of the concept. The interactive sliding tile format, the permanent disruption, and the inability to fully restore the image all operate materially. They make the viewer experience instability rather than simply look at it. The body becomes something that is interrupted by systems. This links to Rhodes' idea that photographic objects can create meaning through ambiguity. The viewer is not given a resolved image. Instead, they encounter a body that is partial, displaced, and difficult to reconstruct. This connects directly to my interest in identity as something affected by external structures.
Rhodes' thesis also connects to my Techniques 4 body of work, Mu (無) Part 1. This work uses cyanotype, walking, hand-stitching, and a large safety barrier format to explore movement, uncertainty, and embodied attention. Rhodes' discussion of photographic materiality helps position the cyanotype process as more than an image-making method. Cyanotype records light, exposure, time, and environmental conditions. It is a process where the image is shaped through contact, duration, and chance. This aligns with Rhodes’ argument that photographic meaning begins with the recording of light and continues through the material form of the finished object. The hand-stitching connects the body to the image through repeated physical action, functioning as a hand-to-brain process, supporting embodied making. The use of the safety barrier adds another layer of meaning. Like Rhodes' photographic objects, the material is not neutral. It changes how the image is understood.
Reflection:
Rhodes' thesis has encouraged me to think more critically about photography within contemporary art, particularly how new technologies and expanded material processes can shift the photograph beyond a conventional flat image. This is important, as both bodies of work use process, surface, structure, and material intervention to communicate the effects of my chronic illness and the shifting construction of myself. Moving forward, I will continue to push these ideas further by exploring how new techniques, material processes, and contemporary technologies can expand the image into a physical and conceptual experience.
References: Rhodes, J 2021, The tangible image: understanding what materiality means for photographic practice, PhD thesis, University of Newcastle, viewed 20 May 2026, <https://openresearch.newcastle.edu.au/articles/thesis/The_tangible_image_understanding_what_materiality_means_for_photographic_practice/29032805>.
Rhodes, J n.d., Select work, viewed 20 May 2026, <https://rhodesjames.myportfolio.com/select-work>.
