Lou Marcus, Instructor
Syllabus for the second half of the semester, March 4th - April 24, 2008
Office hours: Wednesday 10 a.m. - 12 noon or by appointment, FAH 242
This syllabus is also posted at the History of Photography website:
http://historyofphoto.arts.usf.edu/
The version posted on the web may include some links to sources and images related to the topics listed and therefore may be more useful than this printed version.
It is essential that you visit the website’s bulletin board and slide study pages at least one a week in order to keep up on the material introduced in class and that you read your email regularly in order to receive updates sent to the History of Photography listserv. The listserv address is: photohistory@listmonster.cvpa.usf.edu (Messages sent to this address will be received by the entire class.)
Access to slides presentations used
in class lectures is at: http://creo.cvpa.usf.edu
Required work for the second half of the semester:
Summary of due dates for the second half of the semester:
Please note that thoughtful
participation in class discussions can make a positive contribution to your
final grade. Attendance is essential
and unexcused absences in excess of three over the course of the semester will
result in a full grade deduction from the final grade. (See the
syllabus for the first half of the semester for the weighting of course the
various course requirements towards grading.)
The key readings for the second half
of the semester (listed below) are not included within the texts but are to be
downloaded and printed from electronic
reserve.
They are listed below in the order in which they will be discussed
in class. Notice that the readings are
usually situated in the syllabus so that usually the main ideas and issues
within them will be introduced in class before you tackle the reading. (The
link to the library’s electronic reserve is located on the History of
Photography home page and on the web version of this syllabus.)
You should have entries in your readings journal for each of these:
·
Roland
Barthes, The Great Family of Man
·
Allan
Sekula, On the Invention of Photographic Meaning
·
bell
hooks, In Our Glory:Photography and Black Life
·
·
Hervé Guibert, Ghost Image
·
Estelle Jussim, Propaganda and
Persuasion
·
David
Levi-Strauss, Photography and Belief
·
Andy
Grundberg, The Crisis of the Real
·
Geoffrey
Batchen, Ectoplasm: Photography in the Digital Age
Tuesday, March 4th: Review of syllabus/course requirements for the second half of the semester. Introduction to Allan Sekula’s “On the Invention of Photographic Meaning”. The photograph as a message without a code: denotation and connotation in the photograph (Roland Barthes). Alfred Steiglitz and Lewis Hine, documentary vs. symbolic readings of the photograph, the concept of the equivalent and its role in the valorization of photography as an art form. Introduction to Roland Barthes “The Great Family of Man”.
Required readings: (ereserve) PIP: Allan Sekula, On the Invention of Photographic Meaning, pgs. 452-473; (ereserve): Roland Barthes, The Great Family of Man; Marien: Chapter Five: Photography in the Modern Age, pgs. 204-237
Optional reading: Roland Barthes, The Photographic Message (e-reserve)
Thursday, March
6th: Panel discussion on “On the
Invention of Photographic Meaning” and “The Great Family of
Man”; continued discussion of the emergence of photographic modernism in
the early 20th century. Introduction
to bell hooks’ “In Our
Glory: Photography and Black Life” and Herve Guibert’s “Ghost
Image”
Required readings: Required
reading: (ereserve): bell hooks, In
Our Glory, Photography and Black Life;
Hervé Guibert, Ghost Image
Optional reading: Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida (excerpt – e-reserve)
Week 11
Thursday, March 20th: Film and discussion: “Let Us Now
Praise Famous Men, Revisited”
a re-examination of the classic documentary photo/text project by James Agee
and Walker Evans; the documentary as a work of art, as a work of propaganda.
Required readings: (ereserve): Estelle Jussim, Propaganda and Persuasion; Sontag, Chapter 3, Melancholy Objects pgs. 51-82. Continue reading Marien, Chapter Six: A New Vision, pgs. 280-309.
Tuesday, March 25th: Class
discussion of Jussim article: "Propaganda and
Persuasion" . Also: Photography in the
service of surrealism: the photograph’s relationship to categories
of surrealist thought and practice. Neo-surrealist currents in
contemporary art photography; the appropriation and recuperation of surrealist
aesthetics by mass culture.
Required readings: continue
Thursday, March 27th: Panel
discussion of Sontag, Chapter 3, “Melancholy Objects”. Also:
The New Vision: Photography at
the intersection of art, technology and mass culture; an
introduction to the ideas of Walter Benjamin (aura, mechanical reproduction,
the eclipse of distance); distance and estrangement as values in modernist
photography; an examination of the influence of Benjamin’s ideas
through the work of contemporary photographers. Second short paper on a personal
photograph due today.
Required readings: (ereserve) PIP: Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (an excerpt), pgs. 319-334 ;
Marien, Chapter Six: Through the Lens of Culture, pgs. 339-391.
Week 13
Thursday, April 3rd: Panel discussion on Benjamin article. Follow up on "The New Vision: Modernist photographic aesthetics of post
W.W. 2 artists and art after
photography: the post-modern photograph and the deconstruction of
“reality”. The
emergence of post-modernist approaches to photography in the 1970’s -
1990’s.
Required readings: (ereserve): Andy Grundberg, The Crisis of the
Real; Marien: Chapter Seven,
Convergences, pgs. 393 - 422
Week 14
Tuesday, April
8th: Film and discussion: t.b.a.
Thursday, April 10th: Panel discussion of Grundberg’s “Crisis of the Real”. Photography in the digital era: digital manipulation and the "truth" value of the photograph. Introduction to Geoffrey Batchen article, "Ectoplasm: Photography in the Digital Age”
Required readings:
(ereserve): Geoffrey Batchen: Ectoplasm: Photography in the Digital
Age and also: David Levi-Strauss, Photography
and Belief;
Marien, Chapter Eight, Into
the New Millenium, pgs. 489- 512
Week 15
Thursday, April 17th: Film
and discussion: t.b.a.
Week 16
Tuesday, April 22nd: Review
session.
Thursday, April 24th: In-class
final exam.
Take-home final exam and readings journal is due no later
than Wednesday, April 30th, 5:00 p.m. at