Investigative Photography for Scientists and Artists

Catalog description

Artists and scientists are likeminded when they make an image in pursuit of new insights. Pictures can reveal the composition of a specimen, expose a person's character, capture a place's distinctiveness, or produce a new occasion for intimacy. Rosalind Franklin's famous "Photograph 51" of DNA resulted from a desire to see the physical shape of heredity. The artist Shimpei Takeda places film directly on the ground in Fukushima to create a blind measurement of the radioactivity that remains in the earth. This course will introduce photography as an investigative medium for art and science. We will begin with learning the fundamentals of photography while considering ways in which photographs have changed and continue to change the way we perceive space and time. As the class progresses, students from the arts and sciences will work together to learn specialized photographic techniques and complete assignments that explore photography as an investigative medium.