Photo Album

Catalog description

Photo albums are meaningful, unique creations. Infused with intangible memories, they tangibly show specific, select moments of the past - some mundane, others poignant. Highly personal, photo albums also reveal shared encounters and assert human universals. How and by what means do our personal photo albums thus compile collective identities and histories? What stories lie behind their making? What narratives arise - formulaic or unexpected - when related or disparate photographs are organized or randomly displayed in the unifying context of photo albums? This course employs art practice and theory to investigate the curation of vernacular photography in family photo albums. Looking at the global history and contemporary manifestations of these practices, and drawing on NYUAD's Akkasah Center of Photography, it asks: What are the motivations, challenges, and implications of commissioning or taking, collecting, or curating photographs of one's family or oneself? How do we approach such collections as viewers? Who makes, owns, and passes down albums - to whom, for whom, and why? Students will also create photo albums as a generative means of understanding this practice.