Tuesday, January 26
Course Introduction
Thursday, January 28
Michael Lesy, Wisconsin Death Trip Image Gallery (Maria Perunovic)
link to flickr site of Wisconsin Death Trip photos
Walter Benn Michaels, “Photography and Fossils” in Photography Theory, James Elkins, ed. (London: Routledge, 2007). pp. 431-50.
Roland Barthes, excerpts from Camera Lucida, in Liz Wells, ed., The Photography Reader (London: Routledge, 2003), pp. 19-30.
Tuesday, February 2 - Why is Photography Different than Other Artistic Media?
Reed Family Daguerreotype Collection (Special Collections)
Geoffrey Batchen, Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2004). pp. 8-100.
Richard Benson, “Early Photography in Silver,” in The Printed Picture (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2009), pp. 96-123.
Thursday, February 4 - Why is Art History Different than other Humanistic Disciplines?
William Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature Image Gallery (Richard Aldersley)
Michael Ann Holly, “The Melancholy Art,” Art Bulletin 89 (March 2007), 7-17. Available Online.
William Henry Fox Talbot, "A Brief Histoical Skecth of the Invention of Photography," in Alan Tractenberg, ed. Classic Essays on the History of Photography, pp. 27-36.
Friday, February 5
Assignment #1: Concise visual analysis. Due 5 PM in my office mailbox (LIB 320).
Tuesday, February 9
.Julia Cameron, For My Beloved Sister Mia Image Gallery (Tatiana Oudine)
Carol Armstrong, “Cupid's Pencil of Light: Julia Margaret Cameron and the Maternalization of Photography, October, 76, (Spring, 1996), pp. 114-141. Available Online.
Linda Nochlin, “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” Available Online.
Thursday, February 11
No Class
Tuesday, February 16
Carlton Watkins, Stereoscopic Views of Yosemite Image Gallery (Henry Shapiro)
Rosalind Krauss, “Photography’s Discursive Spaces,” in The Contest of Meaning, 287-302.
Oliver Wendall Holmes, "The Stereoscope and the Stereograph," in Classic Essays on Photography, pp. 71-82.
Joel Snyder “Territorial Photography,” in Landscape and Power, second edition, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 175-201.
Thursday, February 18
Atget Paris Image Gallery (Lucy Bellwood)
Abigail Solomon Godeau, “Canon Fodder: Authorizing Eugene Atget,” in Photography at the Dock, pp. 28-51.
Molly Nesbit, “Photography and History: Eugene Atget,” in Michel Frizot, ed. A New History of Photography (Kohl: Konemann, 1998), pp. 399-409.
Tuesday, February 23
Eadweard, Muybride, Animal Locomotion [1887] Image Gallery (Henry Hays-Wehle)
Anson Rabinbach, "Time and Motion: Etienne-Jules Marey and the Mechanics of the Body," in The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity (New York: Basic Books, 1990), pp.89-120.
Walter Benjamin, “A Short History of Photography,” in Classic Essays on Photography, pp. 199-216.
Walter Benjamin, excerpts from “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in The Photography Reader, pp. 42-52.
Thursday, February 25
Alexander Gardner, Sketchbook of the Civil War Image Gallery (Francis Morrison)
Alan Trachtenberg, “Albums of War: On Reading Civil War Photographs,” Representations 9 (Winter 1985): 1-32. Available Online
Walter Benjamin, Theses on History,” in Illuminations (New York: Schoken, 1970). Available Online.
Tuesday, March 2
Edgar Degas, Photographer Image Gallery (Livien Yin)
Peter Gallasi. Before Photography: Painting and the Invention of Photography (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1981), pp. 11-31.
Charles Baudelaire, "The Modern Public and Photography," in Classic Essays on the History of Photography, pp. 83-90.
Thursday, March 4
Camera Work Image Gallery (Santi Leyba)
Allan Sekula, “On the Invention of Photographic Meaning.” In Vicki Goldberg, ed. Photography in Print (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981), pp. 452-473.
Alfred Stieglitz, "Pictorial Photography," in Classic Essays on the History of Photography, pp. 115-124.
Heinrich Wöfflin, “Introduction,” in Principles of Art History [1932], (New York: Dover, n.d.), pp. 1-17
Friday, March 5
Assignment #2: Catalog essay. Due 5 PM in my office mailbox (LIB 320)
Tuesday, March 9
Louis Hine Image Gallery (Nina Liss-Schultz)
Louis Hine, "Social Photography," in Classic Essays on the History of Photography, pp. 109-114.
Thilo Koenig, "The Other Half: The Investigation of Society," in A New History of Photography, 347-357.
Martha Rosler, “in, around, afterthoughts, (on documentary photography)” in The Contest of Meaning, pp. 303-342
Thursday, March 11
Dorothea Lange, An American Exodus Image Gallery (Talia Tiffany)
(link to flikr page with color FAS images)
Alan Tractenberg, “Signifying the Real: Documentary Photography in the 1930,” in The Social and the Real: Political Arts of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere, ed. Alejandro Anreus, et. al. (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006): 3-20.
Tuesday, March 23
August Sander, Citizens of the Twentieth Century Image Gallery (Amy Egerton--Wiley)
Frances B. Johnston, The Hampton Album Image Gallery
Alan Sekula, “The Body and the Archive” in The Contest of Meaning, pp. 343-389.
Ulrich Keller, "Sander and Portrait Photographhy," in Auagust Sander: Citizens of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1980), pp. 8-11, 15-21.
Laura Wexler, "Black and White and Color: American Photographs at the Turn of the Century," Prospects 13 (1988), pp. 341-390.
Thursday, March 25
No Class
Tuesday, March 30
John Heartfield, (En La Collection del Ivam, exhibition catalog) Image Gallery (Eva Gabor)
Benjamin Buchloh, “From Faktura to Factography,” in The Contest of Meaning, pp. 49-80.
Laszlo Maholy-Nahy, "Photography," in Classic Essays on the History of Photography, pp. 167-68.
Thursday, April 1
Man Ray (Aperture Masters of Photography) Image Gallery (Rebekah Volinksy)
Abigail Solomon-Godeau, “The Armed Vision Disarmed: Radical Formalism from Weapon to Style,” in The Contest of Meaning, pp. 82-106
Man Ray, "The Age of Light," in Classic Essays on the History of Photography, pp. 169-178.
Tuesday, April 6
Magazine Photos (Nathaniel Flagg)
Sally Stein, “The Graphic Ordering of Desire: Modernization of a Middle-Class Women’s Magazine,” in The Contest of Meaning, pp. 145-162.
Roland Barthes, “The Rhetoric of the Image” in Classic Essays on the History of Photography, pp. 269-285.
Erwin Panofsky, excerpts from “Iconography and Iconology: An Introduction to the Study of Renaissance Art,” in Meaning in the Visual Arts, pp. 26-41.
Thursday, April 8
The Family of Man (Mackenzie Goldberg)
Blake Stimson, “Photographic Being and the Family of Man,” in The Pivot of the World: Photography and its Nation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), pp. 59-103.
Roland Barthes, “The Great Family of Man,” in Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), pp. 100-102.
Tuesday, April 13
flickr (Jessie Ellington)
Sarah Greenough, "Introduction," to The Art of the American Snapshot (Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2007), pp. 1-7.
Pierre Bourdieu, Photography a Middle Brow Art, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), pp. 13-46.
Thursday, April 15
Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel, Evidence / Spirit Photography Image Gallery (Megan Stockton)
Michael Leja, “Mumler’s Fraudulent Photographs,” in Looking Askance: Skepticism and American Art from Eakins to Duchamp (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 21-58.
James Elkins, “Art History and Images that are Not,” in The Domain of Images (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 3-12.
Friday, April 16
Assignment #3 - 1st revision of catalog essay. Due 5 PM in my office mailbox (LIB 320)
Tuesday, April 20
Walker Evans, American Photographs Image Gallery (Sarah Faigin)
Clement Greenberg, “Towards a Newer Laocoon” in The Collected Essays and Criticism, vol. 1, ed. John O'Brian (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 23-38.
Paul Strand, "Photography and the New God," in Classic Essays on the History of Photography, pp. 141-53.
John Szarkowski, "Introduction" to The Photographer's Eye (New York, Museum of Modern Art).
Thursday, April 22
Ed Ruscha, various photographic books (Michelle de Supinkski)
Kevin Hatch, "Something Else: Ed Ruscha's Photographic Books," October 111 (Winter 2005), pp. 107-126. Available Online.
Tuesday, April 27
Bernd and Hilla Becher (Nicole Herr) Image Gallery
Darise Alexander, "Reluctant Witness: Photography and Documentation of 1960s and 1970's Art," in Helen Molesworth et. al., Work Ethic, exh. cat. (Baltimore Museum of Art, 2003), pp. 53-64.
Thierry de Dive, "Bernd and Hilla Becher or Monumnetary Photography," in Bernd and Hilla Becher: Basic Forms (New York: Neues Publishing Co., 1999), pp. 7-22.
Thursday, April 29
Thomas Demand and Cindy Sherman (Alok Amatya) Image Gallery
Douglas Crimp, “The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism,” October 15 (1980) Available Online.
Michael Fried, "Without a Trace" (on Thomas Demand)," Artforum 43 (March 2005), pp. 199-203.
Monday, May 10
Final Exam. 10 AM - 12 PM, LIB 41