Required and Optional Texts, Books on Reserve, and Bibliography

Required Texts:

Mary Warner Marien, Photography: A Cultural History, New Jersey:  Pearson Prince Hall, 2006 (Referred to in the syllabus as Marien)

Susan Sontag, On Photography, New York: Doubleday, 1977. (Referred to in the syllabus as Sontag.)

Optional Texts:

Goldberg, Vicki, Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present, Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1981.  (Several readings from this book are required and have been placed on e-reserve.  Referred to in the syllabus as PIP)

There are a number of readings which are not contained in the above texts..  All of these readings have been placed on electronic reserve and can be downloaded to your computer.

 Click here to be connected to electronic reserve..

Additionally, xeroxes of brief readings and quotations will be either be handed out in class on a regular basis or will be posted on this website's bulletin board.    You are expected to print out and read all of the brief readings that are posted on the bulletin board, which will be updated weekly.  All of these supplementary readings should be kept in a file for future reference.
 
 

Books on reserve:

The following texts have been placed on 3-day reserve at the main library to allow for greater access by the class.   Although not required reading for the class, they may be helpful sources of ideas and images.

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
TR 642B3713 (3-day) Barthes last book is an expression of is lifelong fascination with photography and takes the nature of a meditation on the relationship between photography, memory, time and death.

William Crawford, The Keepers of Light
TR330.C68 (3-day) Really two books in one, the first half is an extremely lucid overview of the history of photography through the concept of "syntax". The second half is a useful cookbook of 19th century photographic processes.

Michel Frizot (editor) , A New History of Photography, Konemann, 1998
TR15.N6813 (3-day).  A beautifully illustrated volume, well-written and insightful.  Originally published in French, this offers the history of the medium from a European perspective.   This book is worth spending some time with for the illustrations alone, many of which have not been published elsewhere.
 

Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present
TR15N47 1964 (3-day) The "original" history of photography and the first attempt to codify the medium into an intelligible chronology. This book is the "construction" that has been attacked by deconstructive approaches to the history of photography. Well-illustrated.

Naomi Rosenblum, A World History of Photography , New York Abbeville Press, 1997.
TR15.R67, 1984 (3-day) Well-written, comprehensive and almost encyclopedia overview of photography. The "profiles" at the end of each chapter are valuable summaries on some important individuals in photographic history. Hundreds of illustrations.

Naomi Rosenblum, A History of Women Photographers
TR139R67 1994 (3-day) A recent opus and a valuable corrective to the exclusion of women from standard histories of photography. Well-illustrated and an important reference.

Bibliography:

In addition to the readings listed above, the following texts may be helpful to you in pursuing ideas introduced in class on your final paper or for further study of ideas introduced in this class:

Terry Barrett, Criticizing Photographs: An Introduction to Understanding Images.
Mountain View, California: Mayfield Press, 1994.

Roland Barthes, Mythologies. New York: Hill & Wang, 1972.

Geoffrey Batchen, Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997.

Jonathan Crary, Techniques of the Observer, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1991.

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations. New York: Schocken, 1969.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books, 1972.

Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts Into Air: the Experience of Modernity. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982.

Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red, 1983.

Vicki Goldberg, The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed our Lives. New York: Abbeville Press, 1991.

Andy Grundberg, The Crisis of the Real: Writings on Photography, 1974-1989. New York: Aperture, 1990.

Herve Guibert, Ghost Image, Los Angeles, Sun and Moon Press, 1996

Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory, Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1997.

Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983.

Martin Lister, The Photographic Image in Digital Culture, New York: Routledge, 1995

Linda Nochlin, The Politics of Vision. New York: Harper & Row, 1989.

John Roberts, The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday, Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1998

Jo Spence, Cultural Sniping: The Art of Transgression, London: Routledge, 1995.

Carol Squiers (ed.), The Critical Image: Essays on Contemporary Photography. Seattle: Bay Press, 1990.

Marianna Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives, Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990

Deborah Willis, Picturing Us: African-American Identity in Photography. New York: New Press, 1994.