History of Photography
ART HISTORY 355
This course has been designed as a critical introduction to the
history of photography from its origins in the desire to capture
light and fix shadows to declarations of its death in the drive
toward the digital. We will begin with the theoretical questions of
what a photograph is, what it does, and how we look at and read
photographs. We will return to these questions throughout the class.
We will start our consideration of the history of photography with a
study of the disputed beginnings of photography and the investigators
who searched for ways to write with light and fix an image. We will
also go back to look at the earlier imaging devices that shaped the
development of photography and photographic seeing. We will consider
disputes over the evaluation of photography as an "art," the
collection of photographs, and the problems that inhere in attempts
to turn historical photographs into museum objects.
The first unit of the course devotes attention to the photographic
archive and to exploring the production and use of photographs as
evidence, as storage devices for data and memories, and as a medium
for the writing of history. The second and third units turn over the
question of the documentary status of photographs by looking at
practices of photography beyond Europe and the United States, by
delving into the ethical and political issues involved in taking
pictures of so-called "Others," and by considering resistant and
subcultural tactics that work with or against photographs as tools of
evidence or vehicles of dream, desire and fantasy. Over the course of
the semester, we will look at the work of various practitioners of
the medium of photography. But, this course is not a survey of names.
The course emphasizes that to understand the history of photography
means exploring the range of photography's social and cultural
practices, including the catalogue, state surveillance, commercial
advertising and mass media, photographic montages, collages,
documentary photo-essays made to function as agents of social change,
posed scenes and scenarios of desire, and avant-garde and postmodern
art production.
The readings for the course will also introduce you to the important
critics who have engaged with photography in their work and whose
studies of photography demonstrate in various ways how issues of
class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and economic, historical, and
geopolitical relations of power are inseparable from the historical
study of the medium of photography -- its practice, dissemination,
valuation, and interpretation.
Course requirements include reading the essays on electronic reserve,
participating in class meetings, and answering the short answer and
multiple choice questions on two midterm exams and one final exam. In
addition to the exams, you will also do an assignment that involves
taking a photograph yourself. As you are free to use any type of
photographic device including instant, one-step, and photo-booth
technologies, the assignment requires no training and no technical or
artistic skill. Rather, the assignment will ask you to reflect on how
photography functions as an aid to memory and means to access the
past as well as an everyday, non-specialized practice by taking a
photograph yourself that responds to old photographs. No prior
knowledge of the history of photography or art history is assumed or
required.
P: So st or cons inst.
