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5:30 pm |
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Subject: Art History (Grad) (ARHS)
CRN: 22273
Lecture
St Paul: O'Shaughnessy Education Center 414
Requirements Met:
Art History Museum Studies
From Civil War battlefields to Tiananmen Square. Inside factories and living rooms. Mountain peaks, city streets, wars, and birthday parties. Public lives and private moments around the world. Since the invention of photography in 1839, photographers around the world have documented people, places, and moments, allowing us to transcend our own experiences through the photograph. This course examines the development of documentary photography over the course of time and space/place, addressing broad questions such as: What is the purpose of documentary photography and how has it changed over time? What is meant by documentary photography, photo-journalism, and photography as art? What is the relationship of photography to notions of "truth"? What ethical issues are at play in the production and consumption of documentary photography? What drives photographers to document the world? Can documentary photographs lead to change in society? We will read key theoretical texts as well as current scholarship on the topic. Other specific topics to explore include photography and the built environment, women documentarians working in a male-dominated field, war photography, photography and racial and social justice, documentary film and its relation to photography, documenting the landscape, and museums/galleries & the acceptance of photography as an art form. While this course is conceived from an art historical perspective, students will be required to experiment with designing and producing their own documentary project (no special equipment required). Photographers to be studied include well-known documentary photographers such as Bernice Adams, Walker Evans, Louis Hine, Dorothea Lange, Mary Ellen Mark, Gordon Parks, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Steichen, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank, Jacob Riis, and Ansel Adams, as well as many other photographers working globally, from 1839 to the present.
3 Credits