Design Center: Photographic Narrative

Catalog description

Most photographs tell stories. We see photographs in newspapers, magazines, snapshot albums, on the web, in books, and in posters. In these contexts photographs often work with words to convey meaning, whether they are shown with captions, news stories, or just with titles. Photographs can work without words, too, to create purely visual narratives. In this course, students will make a photo narrative and determine how it will be seen. Students may make photo books, for example, or decide that their images will be seen digitally on screen. While students are making photographs, we will explore the rich traditions of photographic story-telling that range from the world-oriented work of photo-journalist W. Eugene Smith to the documentarians such as Walker Evans, Nicholas Nixon, and Alec Soth. We will look at photographers, too, who construct fictional worlds, such as Duane Michals, Cindy Sherman, and Gregory Crewdson. As students make their own narratives, we will look at the interplay between words and photographic images; how images are paced and scaled to create rhythm; how photographs are sequenced to tell stories; and other formal elements involved in creating visual narratives. 12-15 students. Prerequisite-a college level photography course.