Introduction to the History of Art: Photography and Facticity
Spring 2009
LIB 41
Tues - Thurs. 1:10-2:30 PM
Professor Robert Slifkin
LIB 320
email: rslifkin@reed.edu
Office hours: Tuesdays 9 AM - 12 PM or by appointment
As a visual technology predicated on a physical and instantaneous encounter with a depicted subject, the medium of photography is often considered to contain an inherent objectivity unavailable in many other modes of visual representation. This course will explore the various ways in which this rhetoric of objectivity and immediacy has been marshaled throughout the history of the medium as a means to invest certain images, whether manifestly documentary or more purely aesthetic, with a degree of facticity. By exploring the various ways in which this apparently objective mode of representation is in fact socially and historically constructed, this class will introduce students to the basic methodological approaches to the discipline of art history.
Course Requirements:
Attendance and participation
Completion of all Assignments
Every student will lead class discussion on a case study work for a class meeting. These objects - mostly books featuring photographs - are denoted in blue under each class date on the syllabus. Students should be prepared to briefly summarize the historical context and main content of the works and bring up what they consider to be a particuraly illumaniting detail or image in the work.
Final Exam
Required Texts:
Richard Bolton, ed. The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989)
Naomi Rosenblum, A World History of Photography, 4th edition (New York: Abbeville Press, 2007)
Geoffrey Batchen, Forget Me Not: Photography and Memory (Princeton: Princeton Archietcural Press, 2004).
Recommended Texts:
Liz Wells, ed., The Photography Reader (London: Routledge, 2003)
All other readings are available on e-reserve or through various online archives.