Culture of Photography

Catalog description

This is a non-technical introductory photography course where students photographically and intellectually examine the role of photography in modern culture. PHOTO 101 expands students' depth of appreciation, knowledge, and understanding of the medium by providing them with a creative and intellectual background to realize its broad cultural scope. The course accomplishes this through photographic and written explorations of social, political and ethical issues relevant to photography. Photography wields unprecedented influence as a primary visual medium and students constantly use photography in their personal lives as both a communications tool and as a creative outlet. The ubiquitous smart phones with built in cameras are responsible for much of this explosive popularity with social media providing appealing venues for publicly displaying photography. Over the first decade of the new millennium, social media sites saw the volume of photo uploads increase dramatically, eventually exceeding 10 billion per month. In light of photography being a key medium students use to share and communicate information about themselves to the world at large, the course is designed to help them to think critically and ethically about the photographs they take, share, view and use. The major course teaching topics will address a broad range of contemporary issues relevant to how photography and culture affect one another. Students will become aware of photography as a constantly evolving medium, whose relatively short historical trajectory has culminated in the development of an easily accessible egalitarian art form that bridged the digital divide to interact intimately with personal computing, cell phone communications, the Internet, and social media. In the course, students will take photographs to fulfill photographic assignments, share them with peer audiences, and then engage in critical conversations regarding the aesthetic and communicative meaning and effectiveness of the photos. They will also engage in written assignments where the course presents them with case studies regarding current issues in photography such as, the impact of technological developments in the medium, ethical uses of photography, photography as free speech, and photography as social media. Students will conduct research on the topics and develop informed written position statements, which they will share with their classmates for peer evaluation and feedback. In addition, students will engage with selected readings regarding aspects of photography addressed in the major teaching topics.