Description/Outcomes

Course Description:
In this course, students will examine contemporary philosophical, historical, aesthetic and epistemological topics by addressing the evolution of discourse from the Enlightenment into the 20th century. A comprehensive selection of theorists and critics who address visual semiotics and the taxonomy of imagery and ideas will be introduced. Active discussion and participation will be a core requirement.

Course Outcomes Assessment:
The objective is to expand one’s working knowledge of the photographic lexicon, the contemporary artists that have shaped and are currently expanding this evolving vocabulary, and the tools and materials employed to define our current discourse and production within lens-based media. Through required research, students will be responsible for the development and implementation of cultural, political, and personal positions within contemporary interface of this medium. These skills will be developed through independent research conducted on authors, genres, movements, techniques, and technologies, as well as the evolution of these aggregate systems to form the unification of the medium, as we know it today. As informed and critical viewers of imagery, our knowledge base of the history of this medium will become an essential component of one’s arsenal for the development, direction, and execution of personal work.

Friday, September 28, 2012

Reading Due Class 4

Rhetoric of the Image by Roland Barthes

A Photograph by Umberto Echo

Look at Photographs by Victor Burgin

In addition, please bring and be prepared to discuss three to five images that illustrate aspects of the reading selections.

As always, if you have any questions please contact me.


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Monday, September 17, 2012

Reading Class 3

On the Invention of Photographic Meaning by Allan Sekula

A New Instrument of Vision by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

Seeing Photographically by Edward Weston

* Bring to class contemporary visual models that illustrate similar conceptual structures identified within the reading(s) and be prepared to discuss their relationship(s): complements, contrasts and/or contradictions.
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Monday, September 10, 2012

Readings Due Class 2

Reading (check the links under the authors names):

The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin 

Extracts from Camera Lucida by Roland Barths

What has Occurred Only Once: Barthes's Winter Garden/Boltanski's Archives of the Dead by Marjorie Perloff

Benjamin and the Political Economy of the Photograph by W. J. T. Mitchell

Post a short (two – three paragraph) synopsis of the readings on the class blog. In addition to each text synopsis you are to provide a brief autobiographical summation of the author.

Bring to class quotes and subjects to discuss from the readings
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