FRSEM-UA 400 - The Meanings of Photography

Institution:

New York University

Subject:

Description:

We live in an illustrated world, and photographs have come to determine political, personal, and even the most private of decisions. Who is guilty and who is exonerated? Who gets elected and who loses the vote? Whom do you like, will you get to know, or want to be with? Whom you remember and whom will you forget depend on how someone or something has been presented in a photograph. To navigate this maze of images takes special skills. Nowhere more powerfully than in photographs have the lines between reality and fiction, truth and lie, been blurred. There is great danger in this development and immense potential to free ourselves from existing constraints, too. This interdisciplinary seminar explores how photographic images create meaning and how they help us make the worlds we live in. Particular attention is paid to the way photography marks the often invisible difference between someone's private world and the world at large. We read major theoretical texts on photography, watch films where photographs play a decisive role, and look at a wide range of photographs from the inception of the medium to the current moment to test theories of photography against the medium's uncanny and unrivaled power to evoke the real. Be prepared to look closely and to think hard. Readings include texts by Siegfried Kracauer, Walter Benjamin, Vladimir Rodchenko, André Bazin, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Geoffrey Batchen, Allan Sekula, Vilém Flusser, and Mario Vargas Llosa, as well as images by a plethora of artists, professionals, and amateurs from around the globe. Guitar Heroes (and Heroines): Music, Video

Credits:

4.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.nyu.edu

Phone Number:

(212) 998-1212

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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