History and Theory of Photography 1

Display Schedule

Subject guarantor

Tomáš DVOŘÁK

Name of lecturer(s)

Tomáš DVOŘÁK, Josef LEDVINA, Noemi PURKRÁBKOVÁ, Michal ŠIMŮNEK

Department

The subject provides Department of Photography

Contents

16/10

Introduction: theory and history of photography

Course structure overview; requirements for completion and study materials; introduction to required reading for the next lecture. Main approaches to photography research: historiography of photography and its development. Required classics:

Susan Sontag, On Photography

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida: Reflections of Photography

Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography

23/10

Emergence of Technical Images

Media archaeology and the historicization of perception. Camera obscura and the camera. The instrumentalization of vision in the first and second scientific revolutions. Proto-cinematographic apparatuses. Static, moving and dynamic images.

Required reading:

Jonathan Crary. Modernizing Vision. In: Hal Foster (ed.), Vision and Visuality. Seattle: Bay Press 1988, 29–44.

Recommended readings:

Jonathan Crary. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 1990.

David Hockney. Secret Knowledge: Rediscovering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters. Thames & Hudson 2006.

Jussi Parikka, What is Media Archaeology? Polity 2012.

30/10

Photography and intermediality

Old and new media. Medium, apparatus, dispositif. Diorama, panorama, panopticon. Image transmission and coding. Niépce, Daguerre, Bayard.

Required reading:

Geoffrey Batchen. Electricity Made Visible.’ in: W. Chun – T. Keenan (eds.), New Media, Old Media: A History and Theory Reader. New York – London: Routledge 2006, 27–44.

Recommended readings:

Nicoletta Leonardi – Simone Natale (eds). Photography & Other Media in the Nineteenth Century. University Park: Penn State University Press 2018.

Lisa Gitelman – Geoffrey B. Pingree (eds.). New Media 1740–1915. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 2003.

Louis Daguerre. Historical and Descriptive Account of the Various Processes of the Daguerréotype and the Diorama. London: McLean 1839.

6/11

Image replication

Image substitution model. Indexicality. Pantograph. Graphic techniques (woodcut and wood engraving, copper engraving, lithography, photomechanical reproduction). Graphic and photographic reproductions of works of art.

Required reading:

Walter Benjamin. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. in Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books 1968, 217–251.

Recommended readings:

Siegfried Kracauer. Photography. In The Mass Ornament. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1995, 47–63.

André Malraux. Museum Without Walls. In Voices of Silence. Paladin 1974. pp. 13–128.

John Berger. Ways of Seeing. BBC & Penguin, 7–34.

13/11

Reproduction

Photographs in print (books, newspapers, magazines). Atkins, Talbot, Henneman, Archer. Pencil of Nature. Reproduction and scanning. Photo-sculpture and photogrammetry.

Required reading:

William Henry Fox Talbot. Pencil of Nature. London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans 1844–1846.

Recommended readings:

Geoffrey Batchen. Apparitions: Photography and Dissemination. NAMU & Power Publications 2018.

Carol Armstrong. Scenes In a Library: Reading the Photograph in the Book, 1843–1875. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 1998.

Geoffrey Belknap. From a Photograph: Authenticity, Science and the Periodical Press, 1870–1890. London: Bloomsbury 2016.

27/11

Scientific photography and visualization

Objectivity, accuracy, factuality as epistemic ideals. Virtual and material witnessing. Forensic aesthetics. Photography and movement. Muybridge, Marey, Edgerton.

Required reading:

Bruno Latour. Drawing Things Together. In Representation in Scientific Practice. The MIT Press 1990, 19–68.

Recommended readings:

Joel Snyder. Visualization and Visibility. In C. A. Jones & P. Galison (eds.), Picturing Science, Producing Art. London: Routledge 2013, 379–397.

Kelley Wilder. Photography and Science. London: Reaktion Books 2009.

Lorraine Daston – Peter Galison. Objectivity. New York: Zone Books 2007.

4/12

The Photographic Portrait and the Problem of Modern Individuality

Portrait miniatures, silhouettes, caricatures. Physiognomy, typology and characterology. Nadar, Disdéri, Rejlander, Cameron, Sander, Sherman.

Required reading:

Gisèle Freund. Photography & Society. Boston: David R. Godine 1980, 9–51.

Recommended readings:

John Stauffer – Zoe Trodd – Celeste-Marie Bernier. Picturing Frederick Douglass: An Illustrated Biography of the Nineteenth Century’s Most Photographed American, New York – London: W. W. Norton & Co. 2015.

Nathan Jurgenson. The Social Photo. Verso Books 2019.

Rosalind Krauss – Norman Bryson. Cindy Sherman, 1975–1993. New York: Rizzoli 1993.

11/12

Photography, normality and pathology

Image and archive. Photography and statistics. Criminology, medicine, sociology. Galton, Bertillon.

Required reading:

Allan Sekula. The Body and the Archive. October 39, 1986, 3–64.

Recommended readings:

Lila Lee-Morrison. A Portrait of Facial Recognition: Tracing a History of a Statistical Way of Seeing. Philosophy of Photography 2018, (9)2, 107–130.

Georges Didi-Huberman. Invention of Hysteria. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 2003.

Josh Ellenbogen. Reasoned and Unreasoned Images. University Park: Penn State University Press 2012.

18/12

seminar papers consultation

Learning outcomes

Students will gain knowledge of the history of photography, art and visual culture of the 19th century, learn to work with specialist literature, conduct research, analyse photographic images and present their knowledge in the form of a critical essay

Prerequisites and other requirements

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Literature

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BAl0Lq3nB6paYWdvVtVBuh0xB-vXrFL6?usp=share_link

recommended surveys:

Josef Maria Eder. History of Photography (4th edition, 1932). New York: Columbia University Press 1945.

Helmut Gernsheim – Alison Gernsheim. The History of Photography: From the Camera Obscura to the Beginning of the Modern Era. London: Thames and Hudson 1969.

Beaumont Newhall. The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present (5th edition). New York: The Museum of Modern Art 1982.

Naomi Rosenblum. A World History of Photography (3rd edition). New York: Abbeville Press 1997.

Michel Frizot (ed.). A New History of Photography. Köln: Könemann 1998.

Robert Hirsch. Seizing the Light: A Social & Aesthetic History of Photography (3rd edition). London and New York: Routledge 2017.

Mary Warner Marien. Photography: A Cultural History (5th edition). London: Laurence King Publishing 2021.

Liz Wells (ed.). Photography: A Critical Introduction (6th edition). London and New York: Routledge 2021.

Evaluation methods and criteria

The course ends with a classified examination. A condition for passing the course is both the fulfilment of attendance (a maximum of 2 absences per semester are tolerated) and the submission of two written outputs:

1. a paper of 1-2 standard pages describing and interpreting a selected 19th century photograph, to be submitted by 25 November 2024 in PDF format to tomdvorak@famu.cz
2. a final term paper of 5-10 standard pages on a pre-arranged topic, to be submitted by 10 January 2025 in PDF format to tomdvorak@famu.cz

If you do not receive an email confirmation, consider your paper undelivered.

The exam takes the form of a debate over both texts.

Note

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Schedule for winter semester 2024/2025:

• Week view
• List

Schedule for summer semester 2024/2025:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

The subject is a part of the following study plans

• Photography EN - Bachelor - 2022 (Required subjects)