Can Photographs Tell the Truth?

Catalog description

What kinds of truth can photography offer us? In our time, we have seen the rise of technologies that are fundamentally changing how we relate to the images around us. But photographs have been manipulated throughout their history, and have always been used to as tools of influence and control. How is this moment different? How do we choose what to trust? This class places our current situation in the context of the history of photography: a medium that has always both reflected and influenced moments of social change. We will look closely at several of these moments, using historical and contemporary writings to build a framework for understanding the dynamic force that photography is today.