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.
Monday, November 19, 2012
READINGS!
Art, Education, Photography by David Bate
Reading an Archive: Photography Between Labour and Capital by Allan Sekula
In “Art, Education, Photography, David Bate discusses the evolution of photography and it’s function in the modern world. Photography is one of the most social forms of art because it is so easily accessible. Photography is literally all around us! Because of this, Bate’s makes a good point when he says that photography “cuts across every type of discourse, every division, and boundary – institutional, political, geographic, ethnic, age, sex, economic, physic, and so on.”
• The renewal and reinvention of set discourses. For example, the reversal of traditional values.
• Photography was once treated as a product from the “nasty world of the industrialized popular culture.” However, photographic companies argued photographers had control over the process of image making and the conditions of consumption.
• Photography met the needs of an industrialized culture and mass reproduction. • The institutional framework were much different at the end of the 20th century compared to the 19th – art, science, medical, psychiatry, police, tourism to advertising, fashion, news, cinema, television. Photo-based institutions dominate the productions and destruction of the representations of the world.
• “In photography, exhibition value beings to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give away without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance. It is not accident that the portrait was the focal point of early photography. “
• The publicity of the private.
Also, like photography, ”Art is one such cultural site, education is another.” Photography is implemented in systems of education (art schools, colleges, universities, and the cultural values and believes are amongst “new recruits”.
Institutional divisions were obvious, easily-identifiable; styles of images were not.
Education: specific discourse, new vs. old, differences and continuities in new digital age.
Perspective is vital, no matter the time period & technology.
In “Reading an Archive” Allan Sekula discusses the ideologies that are essential in photographic archiving. A single image has authority, but a group of images – an archive of images – has superior authority. Archives give someone or something ownership and the categorizations of images are to guide interpretation. Archiving has an authoritative a attribute considering the appropriation of interpreting images are by dominant institutions who are believed to have immense knowledge and power. Having control in archiving is a privilege because photographs considered as “documents” are used to support mass education and to retell the past. Incorrectly archiving contrasting images can lead to numerous problems. Images can be united and be completely taken out of context. Therefore, it is incredibly important that images are properly catalogued.
“Historical narration becomes a matter of appealing to the silent authority of the archive, of unobtrusively linking incontestable documents in a seamless account.”
“The photograph reflects reality. The archive accurately catalogues the ensemble of reflections, and so on. Even if one admits – as is common enough nowadays – that the photograph interprets reality, it might still follow that the archive accurately catalogues the ensemble of interpretations, and so on again.”
Art, Education, Photography by David Bate Bate’s essay seems to be all over the place, yet by the end of each (almost) paragraph, he seems to conclude and bring his point back to one thing, photography as a discourse in institutions, and how it should be discussed. Bate states in his first paragraph, “ What I am speaking about is not the property of photography at all, it is rather a property of the discourse upon things- like photography- which issues from particular institutional sites.” He begins with pop culture art and how they are one in the same, meaning one was almost dependent on the other and vis versa . He then talks about conceptual art, which pop-art is a perfect Segway from that. Within conceptual art, theory gets brought up and its partnership with practice, theory involves a practice and practice involves theory.” This then somehow leads to private vs public. The private snapshot now becoming public and its powerful meaning to whomever. Wrapping up he ties it back together with institutional education of the art of photography. Overall, this essay was an interesting look at photography though discourse and its multiple facets.
Reading An Archive by Allan Sekula I definitely enjoyed this essay more than Bate’s. In the second paragraph, Sekula states, “The aim of this essay, then, is to understand something of the relationship between photographic culture and economic life.” However, I found myself more interested in the concept he brings up about the meaning of photographs (archives) once they change hands/owners. They are imposed by ownership, but their meanings are up for grabs once they are on sale. So new meanings come to supplant old ones, with the archive serving as a kind of ‘clearing house’ of meaning.” My personal work has a lot to do with meanings and the ideas of the owner projecting their lives through the photographs they acquire, me specifically. He also makes a point of how meaning is always directed by layout, captions, text and site and mode of presentation. All these factors change the way to look and understand photographs. I would really like to talk about this idea in class Monday.
Art, Education, Photography
ReplyDeleteDavid Bate
In “Art, Education, Photography, David Bate discusses the evolution of photography and it’s function in the modern world.
Photography is one of the most social forms of art because it is so easily accessible. Photography is literally all around us! Because of this, Bate’s makes a good point when he says that photography “cuts across every type of discourse, every division, and boundary – institutional, political, geographic, ethnic, age, sex, economic, physic, and so on.”
• The renewal and reinvention of set discourses. For example, the reversal of traditional values.
• Photography was once treated as a product from the “nasty world of the industrialized popular culture.” However, photographic companies argued photographers had control over the process of image making and the conditions of consumption.
• Photography met the needs of an industrialized culture and mass reproduction.
• The institutional framework were much different at the end of the 20th century compared to the 19th – art, science, medical, psychiatry, police, tourism to advertising, fashion, news, cinema, television. Photo-based institutions dominate the productions and destruction of the representations of the world.
• “In photography, exhibition value beings to displace cult value all along the line. But cult value does not give away without resistance. It retires into an ultimate retrenchment: the human countenance. It is not accident that the portrait was the focal point of early photography. “
• The publicity of the private.
Also, like photography, ”Art is one such cultural site, education is another.” Photography is implemented in systems of education (art schools, colleges, universities, and the cultural values and believes are amongst “new recruits”.
Institutional divisions were obvious, easily-identifiable; styles of images were not.
Education: specific discourse, new vs. old, differences and continuities in new digital age.
Perspective is vital, no matter the time period & technology.
Reading an Archive
ReplyDeleteAllan Sekula
In “Reading an Archive” Allan Sekula discusses the ideologies that are essential in photographic archiving.
A single image has authority, but a group of images – an archive of images – has superior authority. Archives give someone or something ownership and the categorizations of images are to guide interpretation. Archiving has an authoritative a attribute considering the appropriation of interpreting images are by dominant institutions who are believed to have immense knowledge and power. Having control in archiving is a privilege because photographs considered as “documents” are used to support mass education and to retell the past. Incorrectly archiving contrasting images can lead to numerous problems. Images can be united and be completely taken out of context. Therefore, it is incredibly important that images are properly catalogued.
“Historical narration becomes a matter of appealing to the silent authority of the archive, of unobtrusively linking incontestable documents in a seamless account.”
“The photograph reflects reality. The archive accurately catalogues the ensemble of reflections, and so on. Even if one admits – as is common enough nowadays – that the photograph interprets reality, it might still follow that the archive accurately catalogues the ensemble of interpretations, and so on again.”
Art, Education, Photography by David Bate
ReplyDeleteBate’s essay seems to be all over the place, yet by the end of each (almost) paragraph, he seems to conclude and bring his point back to one thing, photography as a discourse in institutions, and how it should be discussed. Bate states in his first paragraph, “ What I am speaking about is not the property of photography at all, it is rather a property of the discourse upon things- like photography- which issues from particular institutional sites.” He begins with pop culture art and how they are one in the same, meaning one was almost dependent on the other and vis versa . He then talks about conceptual art, which pop-art is a perfect Segway from that. Within conceptual art, theory gets brought up and its partnership with practice, theory involves a practice and practice involves theory.” This then somehow leads to private vs public. The private snapshot now becoming public and its powerful meaning to whomever. Wrapping up he ties it back together with institutional education of the art of photography. Overall, this essay was an interesting look at photography though discourse and its multiple facets.
Reading An Archive by Allan Sekula
ReplyDeleteI definitely enjoyed this essay more than Bate’s. In the second paragraph, Sekula states, “The aim of this essay, then, is to understand something of the relationship between photographic culture and economic life.” However, I found myself more interested in the concept he brings up about the meaning of photographs (archives) once they change hands/owners. They are imposed by ownership, but their meanings are up for grabs once they are on sale. So new meanings come to supplant old ones, with the archive serving as a kind of ‘clearing house’ of meaning.” My personal work has a lot to do with meanings and the ideas of the owner projecting their lives through the photographs they acquire, me specifically. He also makes a point of how meaning is always directed by layout, captions, text and site and mode of presentation. All these factors change the way to look and understand photographs. I would really like to talk about this idea in class Monday.