Topics in 20th Century Photography
Spring, 1999 ART 449 - Monday and Wednesday 12:50-3:20 - 118 Fine Arts Center Instructor: Mario A. Caro home: 473-2340 e-mail: caro@acsu.buffalo.edu office: Room 135, Center of the Arts hours: Monday 3:30-4:30 or by appointment. Please note: This syllabus will change during the semester. Changes will be announced in class. Course Description The end of the century invites, or rather demands, retrospection. This process of looking back inevitable involves analyses of the signifying practices that claim an archival function. Photographs have always been given a high rank in functioning as records of history. We will examine how photography has come to have this function. How has the discourse of photography created an object that has claimed objectivity and universality while also maintaining its value as a medium for artistic expression? Given the role vision plays in the formation of subjectivity, what are some of the strategies deployed to subvert the photograph's objectifying gaze? With the advent of digital imaging, can we think the end of photography? Course Requirements Classes will consist of slide lectures, discussions, and student presentations. Students will be required to read and discuss various articles and selections from texts, take a mid-term exam, and write three research papers. You will also be responsible for one in-class presentation. Attendance is mandatory. Students are required to attend the full length of all classes, turn in all assignments, and participate in weekly discussions. Two absences are allowed without penalty. Each absence thereafter will result in the lowering of the final grade by one-half letter grade per absence. Three tardy arrivals (10 minutes after class begins) will equal one absence. Required Reading Required reading materials, both books and articles, will be on reserve at the undergraduate library. Students are expected to read all assigned articles and texts and be prepared to discuss them in class. Index Cards Each student will fill out an index card at the end of each class period with their names and the date at the top and a short written response, question, or comment regarding that day's class activity. Grading The final grade for the course will be determined by evaluation in the following areas: 1. Attendance and Participation in Class Discussions 35% 2. First Written Assignment 5% 3. Second Written Assignment 15% 4. Class Presentation 20% 5. Final Research Paper 25% Required Texts Bolton, Richard, ed. The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography. Cambridge, MIT Press, 1989. Wells, Liz, ed. Photography: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge Press, 1997. Course Packet. Books have been ordered through Talking Leaves Bookstore, 3158 Main Street (837-8554) and course packs can be bought across the street from Queen City Duplicating, 3173 Main Street (832-8100). WEEK #1 Course Introduction 1/20 WEEK #2 The Truth in Photographs 1/25 - Jonathan Crary, "Modernizing Vision," in Poetics of Space, 86-97.* - Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida, 63-89.* 1/27 - Max Kozloff, "The Awning That Flapped in the Breeze and the Bodies That Littered the Field: Painting and the Invention of Photography," in The Privileged Eye, 250-268.(X) WEEK #3 Photography as a Commodifying Practice 2/1 - Roland Barthes, "The Rhetoric of the Image," in Image-Music-Text, 32-51, (fig. XVII).* - Anandi Ramamurthy, "Construction of Illusion," in Photography: A Critical Introduction, 151-198. 2/3 - Carol Squiers, "The Corporate Year in Pictures," in The Contest of Meaning, 207-219. WEEK #4 The Photograph as Commodity 2/8 - Liz Wells, "On and Beyond the White Walls," in Photography: A Critical Introduction, 199-247. 2/10 - Walter Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illuminations, 217-251.* WEEK #5 The Irreverence of Postmodernism 2/15 - Douglas Crimp, "Pictures," Art After Modernism, 175-87.* - Hal Foster, "Postmodernism: A Preface," in The Anti-Aesthetic, ix-xvi.* 2/17 - Victor Burgin, "Re-reading Camera Lucida," in The End of Art Theory, 71-92.* WEEK #6 The Captured Gaze 2/22 - Kaja Silverman, "The Gaze" in The Threshold of the Visible World, 125-161.* - First Writings assigment 2/24 - To be announced WEEK #7 Visualizing the Nation 3/1 - Deborah Bright, "Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men: An Inquiry into the Cultural Meanings of Landscape Photography," in The Contest of Meaning, 125-143. Recommended: - Judith Fryer Davidov, "The Body's Geography: Female Versions of Landscape," in Women's Camera Work, 295-375, 456-476. 3/3 - Edward Buscombe, "Inventing Monument Valley: Nineteenth-century Landscape Photography and the Western Film," in Fugitive Images, 87-108.(X) WEEK #8 3/8-3/10 Spring Break WEEK #9 The Photograph as Document 3/15 - Derrick Price, "Surveyors and Surveyed," in Photography: A Critical Introduction, 55-102. 3/17 - Rosler, Martha, "in, around, and afterthoughts (on documentary photography)" in The Contest of Meaning, 303-340. WEEK #10 Observing the Other 3/22 - Judith Fryer Davidov, "'Always the Navajo Took the Picture,'" in Women's Camera Work, 103-155.* 3/24 - Christopher Pinney, "The Parallel Histories of Anthropology and Photography," in Anthropology and Photography, 74-95.* WEEK #11 The Desired Image 3/29 - Allan Sekula, "The Body and the Archive," in The Contest of Meaning, 343-388. 3/31 - Victor Burgin, "Photography, Phantasy, Function" in Thinking Photography, 177-216, 230-233.* WEEK #12 Imaging Desire 4/5 - Jan Zita Grover, "Dykes in Context: Some Problems in Minority Representation," in The Contest of Meaning, 163-202. Recommended: - Linda Williams, "Corporealized Observers: Visual Pornographies and the 'Carnal Density of Vision,'" in Fugitive Images, 3-41.(X) 4/7 To be announced WEEK #13 Abjecthood and Alterity 4/12 - Simon Watney, "Photography and AIDS," in The Critical Image, 173-192.* - Jo Spence, "Cultural Sniper: Passing/Out," in Cultural Sniping, 204-211, 230.* [second paper due 8-12] 4/14 - Craig Owens, "Posing," in Beyond Recognition, 201-217. (X) WEEK #14 Subverting Identity 4/19 - Paul B. Franklin, "Orienting the Asian Male Body in the Photography of Yasumasa Morimura," in The Passionate Camera, 233-247.* - Jolene Rickard, "Cew Ete Haw I Tih: The Bird that Carries Language Back to Another," in Partial Recall, 105-111.* 4/21 - Henry M. Sayre, "The Rhetoric of the Pose: Photography and the Portrait as Performance," in The Object of Performance, 35-65, 275-277.* WEEK #15 Photography Beyond the Camera 4/26 - Martin Lister, "Photography in the Age of Electronic Imaging," in Photography: A Critical Introduction, 251-291.(X) 4/28 - To be announced WEEK #16 Conclusion 5/3 Final presentations SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. London: Fontana, 1984. Barthes, Roland. Image-Music-Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Trans. Harry Zohn. New York: Schocken Books, 1968. Bolton, Richard, ed. The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989. Bright, Deborah, ed. The Passionate Camera: Photography and Bodies of Desire. New York: Routledge, 1998. Burgin, Victor. The End of Art Theory: Criticism and Postmodernity, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press International, 1986. Burgin, Victor. Thinking Photography. London: Macmillan, 1982. Collier, John, Jr. and Malcolm Collier. Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1986. Crimp, Douglas. On the Museum's Ruins. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995. Davidov, Judith Fryer. Women's Camera Work: Self/Body/Other in American Visual Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998. Druckrey, Timothy, ed. Electronic Culture: Technology and Visual Representation. New York: Aperture, 1996. Edwards, Elizabeth, ed. Anthropology and Photography 1860-1920. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Foster, Hal, ed. Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture. Port Townsend, Washington: Bay Press, 1983. Harper, Glenn, ed. Interventions and Provocations. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. hooks, bell. Art on My Mind: Visual Politics. New York: New Press, 1995. Jeffrey, Ian. Photography: A Concise History. New York and Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1981. Kozloff, Max, The Privileged Eye. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1987. Lippard, Lucy, ed. Partial Recall. New York: The New Press, 1992. Mora, Gilles. Photospeak : A Guide to the Ideas, Movements, and Techniques of Photography, 1839 to the Present. New York: Abbeville Press, 1998. Mountoussamy-Ashe, Jeanne. Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1985. Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1982. Owens, Craig. Beyond Recognition: Representa-tion, Power, and Culture. Ed. Scott Bryson, Barbara Kruger, Lynne Tillman, and Jane Weinstock. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Petro, Patrice, ed. Fugitive Images. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995. Price, Mary. The Photograph: A Strange, Confined Space. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Rosenburg, Naomi. A World History of Photography. New York: Abeville Press, 1997. Sayre, Henry M. The Object of Performance: The American Avant-Garde since 1970. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Silverman, Kaja. The Threshold of the Visible World. New York: Routledge, 1996. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. Harmondsworth, New York: Doubleday, 1977. Spence, Jo. Cultural Sniping: The Art of Transgression. London: Routledge, 1995. Squiers, Carol. The Critical Image: Essays on Contemporary Photography. Seattle: Bay Press, 1990. Sullivan, Constance, ed. Women Photographers. London: Virago, 1990. Szarkowski, John. Photography Until Now. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1989. Tagg, John. The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. London: MacMillan, 1988. Thomas, Alan. The Expanding Eye. London: Croom Helm, 1978. Thomas, Deborah Willis. Black Photographers 1840-1940: An Illustrated Bio-Bibliography. New York: Garland, 1985. Tucker, Ann, ed. The Woman's Eye. New York: Knopf, 1973. Turner, Peter. History of Photography. London: Hamlyn, 1987. Wallis, Brian, ed. Art After Modernism: Rethinking Representation. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984. Wallis, Brian, ed. Hans Haacke: Unfinished Business. New York: New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1986. Wells, Liz, ed. Photography: A Critical Introduction. London and New York: Routledge Press, 1997. Williams, Val. The Other Observers: Women Photographers from 1900 to the Present. London: Virago, 1991. Yates, Steve, ed. Poetics of Space: A Critical Photographic Anthology. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995.