FWS: Origins of Photography

Catalog description

This course will allow first-years to answer the question: from where, and how, did the idea evolve that one might catch a picture in a net, as one might catch not only a butterfly but the piece of sky in which it flew? By discovering how photography evolved, students will learn how many forces—artistic, scientific, technological, political, phenomenological, and structural—are responsible for the appearance of a single invention and idea. Episodes from the history of optics, perspective drawing, mapmaking, landscape, chemistry, view painting, will be glimpsed (1300-1800) as well as the race to capture the image in the camera obscura (1800-1839) and an introduction to early photographic processes (1839-1870).