History of Photography
| Department | Fine and Performing Arts |
|---|---|
| Teacher | Cheyenne Butcher |
| Sessions | 1 |
| GR Code | FA |
| Offered | Currently |
| Open to |
Sophomores Juniors Seniors |
Photographs can provide glimpses into lives past, long-ago events, and forgotten places. They can help shape our understanding of culture, history, and the identity of the people who appear in them. Photography has been utilized in these ways, and perceived as both an art form and a tool. Photographs can also be powerful tools for telling stories and chronicling events. Their context and presentation can greatly influence the way we understand everything from historical narratives to current cultural issues and situations. This course is a one-trimester survey of photography from its prehistory to the present. Course readings, lectures, and demonstrations will address photography’s multiple histories: as artistic medium, as social text, as technological adventure, and as cultural practice. We will view images made by important contributors to photography’s histories, as well as images that are important less for who made them than for their power within the discourses of mass culture. We will also learn about various technical processes, the camera’s evolution, and the vocabulary and issues of photographic theory and criticism.
This class is a lecture based photo course with some alternative processing.