PHOTO 1—History of Photography Chaffey College, Summer 2017 Instructor: Sarah Bay Gachot

LECTURES NOTE: slideshows, videos, and other helpful links will be added as the course progresses. Also, don't forget: you can also download additional suggested readings for research via Dropbox. Week 01 - Hello! A Story, Origins, and Considering the Word "Invention" TUESDAY, JUNE 6 Course introduction and syllabus review - Read in class: Italo Calvino, "The Adventure of a Photographer," in Art on Paper (March/April 2008) pp. 42 - 47 (PDF) - Slideshow: HERE On stroboscopic photography: Info on Harold Edgerton More on Gjon Mili THURSDAY, JUNE 8 Hand in Student Questionnaire and discuss Info-processing & Questionnaire Worksheet - Bring-to-class day: Find a Photobook and Look Write a Think Piece on any image from the photo book you chose to bring to class. Pick one image from your chosen photo book and, in class today, you will spend some time looking at your image. You will freely write about it - whatever comes to mind - for 10 minutes. Once you are finished writing, you're going to exchange papers with your neighbor and discuss the approach that came naturally to you in writing about your image. Questions we will ask: • Did you focus on the formal elementsof the image, like composition? • Did you write about the technical aspects of the image? • How about the symbols in image (the iconography)? • Or the history behind the image? • Or the personal identity the image expresses? • Or the phychological factors you find important to the image? Most of all, this assignment is about seeing and communicating through writing what the image means to you and why you find it important. READING: Photography: A Cultural History, 4th Edition Introduction and Chapter One "The Origins of Photography" intro section pp. XIII - 4 Begin with section "The 'Sun Writing' of Niepce" pp. 10 - 16 Begin with section "Talbot's Photogenic Drawing" pp. 19 - 21 Section "Talbot and The Pencil of Nature" pp. 28 - 29 NOTE: Just this once, these readings are available as a PDF in case you have not gotten the textbook yet: click here. - Slideshow: HERE Reference: Publishers that make photo books Pre-photographic processes Daguerreotype Process Calotype Process George Eastman House videos on Photographic processes William Henry Fox Talbot, The Pencil of Nature online Week 02 - Uses for the Medium & Is This Art or Science? TUESDAY, JUNE 13 - In-class exercise: Nouns, Verbs, Adverbs, Adjectives READING: Photography: A Cultural History, 4th Edition focus: "Photography, Race, and Slavery" p. 36 focus: "The Mexican-American War" p. 42 Section "The Historic Monuments Commission" pp. 50 - 55 Begin with section "The Photography Studio" pp. 62 - 71 - Slideshow: HERE Reference: John Berger on Art and "Ways of Seeing" (BBC, 1972) Audio of Carrie Mae Weems on From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried, 1995-96 Website for Carrie Mae Weems On art historical methodologies: ICONOGRAPHY: The Art of Arrangement, an exhibition at the National Media Museum, UK, 2013. HISTORICAL CONTEXT: On Lewis Hine's Cotton Mill Girl. FORMALISM: Edward Weston Pepper No. 30, 1930 ON FORMALISM IN STILL LIFE ON CLEMENT GREENBERG (formalist art critic) TECHNOLOGY: Walead Beshty IDENTITY POLITICS: YBCA, exhibition, Migrating Identities PSYCHOANALYSIS: Slavoj Zizek on Hitchcock's The Birds. PSYCHOANALYSIS: A clip from the show Naked City, 1962. THURSDAY, JUNE 15 - In-class exercise: Image Analysis group-rewrite - DUE: What to Photograph? exercise ideas READING: Photography: A Cultural History, 4th Edition Begin with section "The Stereograph" pp. 78 - 81 Section "Photography as a Fine Art" pp. 82 - 85 Begin with section "Women Behind the Camera" pp. 88 - 95 - Slideshow: HERE Reference: The Countess da Castiglione Zoe Crosher - Michelle duBois projects In Almost Every Picture Results of the in-class Image Analysis group-rewrite exercise: Eugène Atget, Avenue des Gobelins, 1925. This image shows a shop window displaying fashions of the day. The foreground of this image is a reflection of the city street. The background appears to consist of buildings, which are actually a reflection in the display glass at an angle. The multiple mannequins are strongly reminiscent of the men in the city, and merge with the reflection of the busy streets. Atget may be suggesting the separation between the idea of fashion and the idea of a city. Although this window is meant to display men's clothing, Atget is ironically showing the idea of men on Avenue des Gobelins socially, economically, and physically through the unreality of a reflection in glass. The foreground in this image shows a reflection of dark vertical cable poles and trees. The lines of the cable poles, buildings, and trees intersect to form rectangles that create negative space. There is an interesting use of contrast with positive and negative space, for instance the blank sky with the light clothes allow the dark buildings in the reflection to appear as a background but yet can seem to be in their own picture. The repeated pants, all in a row, creates a rectangular pattern that continues through the display. There is also pattern and repetition in the rectangular-shaped pants and building windows along with an abstract view caused by the reflection of the city. Week 03 - Conflict, Topographical Survey Photography, Science, Kodak, Pictorialism TUESDAY, JUNE 20 - Class Visit: Wignall Museum of Contemporary Art READING: Photography: A Cultural History, 4th Edition Begin with section "The Crimean War" pp. 98 - 109 Begin with section "Government Surveys in the United States" pp. 129 - 139 Beginning of Chapter "Science and Social Science" intro, through section "Dying Cultures" pp. 141 - 146 - Slideshow: HERE Reference: Radio Lab: Errol Morris and In the Valley of the Shadow of Doubt Errol Morris on Roger Fenton in the Crimea, NY Times Gardner's Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil War Devil's Den, by Eva O'Leary and Harry Griffin THURSDAY, JUNE 22 - In-class review: Photo Jeopardy Test Review - Test ReviewTopics READING: Photography: A Cultural History, 4th Edition Beginning of Chapter Six "The Great Divide" through section "'You Press the Button - We Do the Rest'" pp. 163 - 167 Begin with section "The Challenge for Art Photography" pp. 168 - 172 Begin with section "The Photo-Secession" pp. 179 - 190 Begin with section "Pictorialism: A Conservative Avant-Garde" pp. 194 - 199 - Slideshow: HERE Week 04 - Early 20th C. - Social Reform Photography, Mass Media, and WWI TUESDAY, JUNE 27 - TEST: Mid-term The test will cover textbook reading to Page 199, which is the end of Chapter 6, and class discussion See EXAM REVIEW TOPICS HERE - In-class writing: Image Analysis on an image to be assigned THURSDAY, JUNE 29 - In-class presentation: Online museum visit/find an image - (NEW DAY) In-class exercise: Which final project assignment would you absolutely not choose? READING: Photography: A Cultural History, 4th Edition Begin with section "Social Reform Photography" pp. 202 - 207 Begin with section "Science and Photography/The Photography of Movement" pp. 208 - 214 Begin with section "World War I" pp. 224 - 227 Beginning of Chapter Eight "Art and the Age of Mass Media" intro, section "Photojournalism" pp. 233 - 236 - Slideshow: HERE Reference: Some examples of vernacular photography collections: Ben Alper: The Archival Impulse and the collection of Brad Feuerhelm Radio Lab, on Color: CLICK HERE WWI in photos Michael Nyman's War Work Week 05 - Dada, Surrealism, f.64, the F.S.A., and WWII TUESDAY, JULY 4 HAPPY 4TH OF JULY no class.... THURSDAY. JULY 6 - DUE: Final Project Summary - just a few sentences about which option for the project you choose, and what your project will be about. If you choose option one, what kind of photo exhibition would you curate? If you choose option two, what issue or episode from photo history are you responding to and how will you make images about this? If you choose option three, what kind of fictional character will you create? A PDF of Final Project instructions can be found HERE. - DUE: What to Photograph? exercise photos due via (Actual-size JPEGS please, or at least close to 1200 x 1800 pixels, or print them yourself on 4 x 6 in photo paper for class July 18) What to Photograph? things: Hair Interesting co-worker (or fellow student) Light Life Palm Trees READING: Photography: A Cultural History, 4th Edition Begin with section "Dada and After" pp. 240 - 257 Portrait "August Sander" p. 262 Begin with section "California Modern" pp. 266 - 275 Begin with section "The Farm Security Administration" pp. 278 - 286 Begin with section "World War II" pp. 297 - 306 Reference: A video on Surrealism CLICK HERE A video on women Surrealists, including Claude Cahun: CLICK HERE A video on Edward Weston: CLICK HERE Films on Demand video on FSA photography: CLICK HERE, or available through Chaffey Library resources, scroll to "Films on Demand." A video on Dorothea Lange: CLICK HERE A video on Walker Evans: CLICK HERE Debbie Grossman: My Pie Town - CLICK HERE William T. Jones: Killed - CLICK HERE A video on Lee Miller: CLICK HERE A video that shows the flag raising on Iwo Jima, also photographed by Joe Rosenthal: CLICK HERE - Slideshow: HERE - Our surrealist writing exercise is HERE. Week 06 - The Cold War, Street Photo, Social Landscape, Pop Art, and Conceptual TUESDAY, JULY 11 READING: Photography: A Cultural History, 4th Edition Beginning of Chapter Eleven "The Human Family" intro, sections "The Family of Man" and "Cultural Relativism and Cultural Resistance" pp. 311 - 315 Begin with section "Photographing the Atomic Bomb" pp. 328 - 335 Begin with section "Annihilation, Alienation, Abstraction: America" pp. 339 - 348 Begin with section "The Social Landscape" pp. 348 - 357 Begin with section "Photography in Art" pp. 372 - 383 Reference: A video on conceptual art: CLICK HERE User: 1564102-user Password: digital A video of Robert Rauschenberg explaining Erased de Kooning: CLICK HERE A video on John Baldessari: CLICK HERE - Slideshow: HERE THURSDAY, JULY 13 In-class exercise: The Final Project Ideas Expansion Exercise. This will help you to develop your final project ideas. READING: Photography: A Cultural History, 4th Edition Begin with section "The Predicaments of Social Concern" pp. 416 - 422 Portrait, Sebastiao Salgado p. 426 Begin with section "The New Social Documentary" pp. 437 - 441 Reference: Some videos of social landscape and documentary photographers: William Eggleston CLICK HERE An-My Le CLICK HERE Jim Goldberg CLICK HERE Martha Rosler CLICK HERE Taryn Simon on secret sites CLICK HERE Latoya Ruby Frazier on her visual history of income inequality CLICK HERE Sebastaio Salgado on damaging photos CLICK HERE - Slideshow: HERE Week 07 - The Postmodern Era TUESDAY, JULY 18 - ON VIEW: What to Photograph? exercise photos - In-class review: Photo Jeopardy Test Review - Test review prep READING: Photography: A Cultural History, 4th Edition Begin with section "The Postmodern Era" pp. 441 - 444 Begin with section "Enter Fashion" pp. 486 - 491 On New Topographis: Catherine Opie : CLICK HERE Henry Wessel on his photography: CLICK HERE Audio of the artists of New Topographics: Robert Adams from a 2005 interview, J. Paul Getty Museum. Lewis Baltz from Contacts Vol. 2: The Renewal of Contemporary Photography (2005), Arte France. Hilla Becher from a 2008 interview with Hilla Becher, J. Paul Getty Museum. Joe Deal from a lecture at Arizona State University, Tempe, February 1, 1977 (CCP, U. or Ariz coll.). Frank Gohlke from a lecture September 17, 2007, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX. Nicholas Nixon from a lecture at Columbia College Chicago, Fall 2008. John Schott excerpt from John Schott, recorded 2009. Stephen Shore from AIR, Art International Radio, first broadcast on September 26, 2005. Henry Wessel from a 2007 interview with Henry Wessel, SFMOMA. On Postmodernism: The V&A Museum video on Postmodernism Adam Curtis: Oh Dearism (2009) Adam Curtis: Oh Dearism II (2014) More films by Adam Curtis here: HERE Reference: Hito Steyerl's How Not to be Seen... CLICK HERE and Being Invisible Can Be Deadly CLICK HERE - Slideshow: HERE THURSDAY, JULY 20 - DUE: Final Project due - TEST: Final Covers all assigned readings after page 200 and class discussion See TEST REVIEW TOPICS HERE - DUE: Extra Credit Exhibition Report due NOTE: if you would like your final project/exam or extra credit materials returned, turn in your projects with a large envelope with postage to cover the return (about $2 usually) addressed to yourself and I will mail them back to you with your grades.