Economic Issues through a Photographer's Lens

Catalog description

This course is a WRAP course because it's about Writing, Research, Analysis, and Photography. It is an introduction to the great tradition of documentary photography or photojournalism (storytelling and communicating with pictures). At the same time, this is an economics course, which means any student enrolled in this class knows the basics of Micro and Macroeconomics. NYC offers a rare opportunity to observe many economic issues that you learned in your principles courses - economic growth, inequality and poverty, volatility in financial markets, welfare costs of immigration and discrimination, etc. During the semester, you will become skilled at observing the economic phenomena around you in a new way and will work on assignments that will emulate what it is like to be a photojournalist, say for The Economist. Because it is a writing enhanced course (WEC), there will be a heavy emphasis on writing. The course will require reading and writing about both, photography and economic issues, as well as doing photography on a regular basis. In addition to advancing your knowledge of micro and macroeconomics, the class emphasis is on what photographs mean to us, on doing documentary work, and on telling stories with photographs. Your primary function will be to make storytelling images of the economic issues we discuss in a classroom and communicate about your photographs.