Course Description
Forms, functions, and meanings of photographic production in Europe and America during the 1800s. Issues to be addressed are: the nature of the medium, its relationship to "reality," its various techniques and technology, its role in art and science, and its publics and patronage.
Additional Requirements for Graduate Students:
Graduate students will be expected to produce an extensive research paper on specific works or issues related to the field and the methodologies appropriate to the topic under consideration in the course. This paper will be a detailed, in-depth consideration of the student's chosen theme requiring not only a demonstration of advanced research skills (including the ability to read and use material presented in foreign languages), but also an articulation of the student's ability to understand and minipulate the critical apparatus of art history.
Athena Title
19TH C PHOTOGRAPHY
Prerequisite
Two ARHI 3000-level courses and permission of major
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
To equip students with the necessary critical skills to interpret photographs in a historically informed fashion as visual images, not simple documents "taken" from the real world.
Topical Outline
Week 1: The History of the History of Photography Week 2: The Nature of the Medium Week 3: Demand for the Medium: Nature, Entertainment, and Spectacle Week 4-5: Technology as Syntax: Daguerreotypy, Calotypy, Wet Collodion, and Combination Printing Week 6-7: Documentary: War, Geology, and Poverty Week 8: Photography and Identity: The Carte-de-Visite Portrait Week 9: Photography and Industry: Patterns and Railroads Week 10: Exam and Visit to Photographic Collection Week 11: Amateurs and Albums Week 12-13:Photography and Impressionism Week 14: Photography and Science I: Motion Studies Week 15: Photography and Science II: Ethnology, Expression, and Darwin Week 16: Photography as Fine Art: Naturalist and Pictorialist Photography