OFFICE HOURS:  To be announced

EMAIL:  rebecb@sas.upenn.edu (office); rebeccb@aol.com (home).  For faster response, please send messages to both addresses.

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

This course will offer a history of photography in the United States and Europe from 1839 to the present.  We will look at photography in relation to social and cultural contexts and to theories about the function of images.  Some of the major issues we will explore are:  photography's effects on portraiture, high art, popular culture, pornography and social documentation; the uses to which photography has been put by professional and amateur anthropologists, explorers, politicians and scientists; and the rise of photojournalism and advertising.  We will consider photography in the context of continuing debates concerning the nature of reality and truth, photography's status as art or document, subjectivity versus objectivity, and issues regarding originality, authenticity and power.

Our weekly session will generally include discussion of the reading assignments as well as lectures.

CLASS TEXTS:  Available at the Pennsylvania Book Center

Naomi Rosenblum, A World History of Photography
Alan Trachtenberg, ed. Classic Essays in Photography
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
Reading Packet (RP), available at Campus Copy
Additionally, all students are required to have some kind of style manual.  I would recommend Sylvan Barnet, A Short Guide to Writing About Art.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS:

Each of the requirements below will constitute 20% of a student's grade.  Readings should be completed for that day's class.

1. 10 Journal entries (1-2 page papers) on specific questions, issues or  images related to that day's lecture material.
2. Midterm exam.
3. Formal analysis paper (3-5 pages).
4. Final exam.
5. Class attendance and participation in discussions.

COURSE SCHEDULE:  (Projected; the final syllabus will be available at the start of class.)

9/14  INTRODUCTION & OVERVIEW; PHOTOGRAPHY'S INVENTION & EARLY HISTORY

9/21  PHOTOGRAPHY & THE BODY:  PORTRAITS OF VARIOUS SOCIAL CLASSES & CELEBRITIES

Readings:  Rosenblum, chs. 1 & 2
  Louis J.M. Daguerre, "Daguerreotype" in Classic Essays
  Dominique Francois Arago, "A Brief Historical Sketch of the Invention of the Art" in Classic Essays
  Edgar Allan Poe, "The Daguerreotype" in Classic Essays

Due:  1st Journal entry

9/28  PICTURING SOCIETY:  GROUPS, ARCHITECTURE, EVENTS, WARS

Readings: Rosenblum, ch. 4
  Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
  Susan Sontag, "In Plato's Cave" (RP)

Due:       2nd journal entry due

10/5  EXPLORING "FRONTIERS":  EXOTIC PLACES, AMERICAN WEST, SCIENCE

Readings: Rosenblum, ch. 3
  Abigail Solomon-Godeau, "Calotypomania" (RP)

Due:        3rd Journal entry

10/12  PHOTOGRAPHING THE OTHER:  ANTHROPOLOGY, MEDICINE, PORNOGRAPHY & THE POLICE

Readings: Poignant, "Survey the Field of View" (RP)
  Alan Sekula, "The Body and the Archive" (skim) This article is on   desk reserve at the Fine Arts Library

Due:        4th Journal entry

10/19  MIDTERM EXAM
  PHOTOGRAPHY & ART I:  THE PRE-RAPHAELITES

Readings: Rosenblum, chs. 5 & 6
  Lady Eastlake, "Photography" in Classic Essays
  Charles Baudelaire, "The Modern Public and Photography" in Classic Essays
  Henry Peach Robinson, "Idealism, Realism, Expressionism" in Classic Essays

Due:        5th Journal entry

10/26  PHOTOGRAPHY & ART II:  PICTORIALISM--HIGH ART OR POPULAR HOBBY

Readings: Rosenblum, ch. 7
  Peter Henry Emerson, "Hints on Art" in Classic Essays
  Alfred Stieglitz, "Pictorial Photography" in Classic Essays
  Paul Strand, "Photography" & "Photography and the New God" in Classic Essays
  Alan Sekula, "On the Invention of Photographic Meaning" (RP)

Due:        6th Journal entry

11/2  PICTURING/DOCUMENTING SOCIETY I

Readings:   Rosenblum, ch. 8

11/9  PICTURING/DOCUMENTING SOCIETY II

Readings: Rosenblum, ch. 10
  Lewis Hine, "Social Photography" in Classic Essays
  Solomon-Godeau, "Who Is Speaking Thus?  Some Questions about Documentary Photography" (RP)

Due:        7th Journal entry due

11/16  PHOTOGRAPHY & POLITICS:  FUTURISM, DADA, SURREALISM, RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY PHOTOGRAPHY, FASCIST PHOTOGRAPHY

Readings: Rosenblum, ch. 9
  Walter Benjamin, "A Short History of Photography" in Classic Essays
  Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (RP)
  Maud Lavin, "Heartfield in Context" (RP)

Due:        8th Journal entry & Formal Analysis Paper

11/23  CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY:  NATURAL & CULTURAL LANDSCAPES

Readings: Rosenblum, chs. 11 & 12
  Deborah Bright, "Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men:  An Inquiry into the Cultural Meanings of Landscape Photography" (RP)
  Thomas Crow, "Saturday Disasters" (RP)

Due:        9th Journal entry due

11/30  CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY:  THE BODY/THE BODY POLITIC

Readings: Max Kozloff, "The Family of Nan" (RP)
  John Berger, "Understanding a Photograph" in Classic Essays
  Roland Barthes, "The Rhetoric of the Image" in Classic Essays

Due:        10th Journal entry

12/7  COURSE EVALUATION & FINAL EXAM