History and Theory of Photography 2

Display Schedule

Subject guarantor

Name of lecturer(s)

Tomáš DVOŘÁK, Josef LEDVINA, Michal ŠIMŮNEK

Contents

This course introduces the history and theory of photography, art, and visual culture in the 20th century, and develops basic research methods and critical writing techniques. It focuses primarily on the following subject areas: vernacular photography and consumer culture; modernism and the modern age; surrealism and the image; documentary photography and photojournalism; photography in conceptual art; postmodern art; new media and photography; and operative images.

(12/02)

Vernacular Photography and Consumer Culture (Michal Šimůnek)

The lecture focuses on the vernacular (mainly family) photography, that is discussed in the perspective of selected concepts and approaches of cultural studies, semiotics, history, sociology and anthropology of photography. In the broader context of reflection on the relationship between consumer, popular and visual culture we are going to specify social functions and meanings of vernacular photography and explain how the family life is photographically depicted within historically shifting and mutually interacting discourses of consumer culture and advertising, studio photography, photojournalism, documentary photography, art and family life itself. The final part of the lecture focuses on the transformations of vernacular photography in contemporary digital culture.

Geoffrey BATCHEN, “Whither the Vernacular?” In: T. M. Campt et al. eds., Imagining Everyday Life. Engagements with Vernacular Photography. Göttingern, New Your, Neu-Ulm: Steidl, The Walther Collection, s. 33–40 + s. 61–66 (Discussion).

(19/02)

Pictorialism (Josef Ledvina)

The lecture will cover the development of the relationship of photography to painting, touching on issues of indexicality, respectively iconicity of the photographic image and points towards various times in the history of photography when photographers were interested in the potential use of photographic technology for creating stylized images rather than objective copies of reality. This begins with the self-awareness process of photography - (Anna Fárová), refined printing and Stieglitz's pictorial photography. The issues of photography as an image and intersecting of painting and photography will be further developed in examples from 20th century art („Picture Generation“, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Gerhard Richter, etc.) through theory writings pointing at the image considerations of photography in contemporary art (Michael Fried, Jean Francois Chevrier, Douglas Crimp).

A. D. Coleman, “The Directorial Mode. Note towards a Definition” (1976), in: Vicky Goldberg, ed., Photography in Print. Writings from 1816 to the Present, Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981, s. 480–491.

(26/02)

Documentary Photography and Photojournalism (Michal Šimůnek)

The lecture is conceived as a commented overview of the history of documentary photography and photojournalism. The commentaries are focused on the changing social, cultural and technological context determining assumptions about the meaning and purpose of documentary genres and stimulating different sorts of expectations from photographers and audiences. The lecture also deals with contemporary transformations of photo documentary tradition and new digital forms of documentary photography and photojournalism. Emphasising the role of photography in new documentary approaches, the lecture deals with so called interactive, web, transmedia, cross-platform, collaborative, database, algorithmic, VR and live documentaries.

Mette SANDBYE. “New Mixtures: Migration, war and cultural differences in contemporary art-documentary photography”. Photographies 2018, 11:2–3: 267-287

(04/03)

Cameraless photography (Michal Šimůnek)

Although cameraless photography has a stable place in the history (the very first photographs were produced without the use of a camera) and the present of the medium, it is a peripheral photographic practice occurring at the edge of photography and simultaneously making boundaries of photography uncertain. The lecture offers an overview of various cameraless techniques and experimental photographic practices (e.g. anthotypes, the chlorophyll/photosynthesis photography, cliché verre, photograms, x-rays and other other-then-light-rays images, chemigraphs, skiagraphs, screenshots, in-game photography, scanned images) and examples of their application as practiced by some selected inventors, scientists, artists and amateurs. We will pay attention to the specific status and materiality of these images and will consider diverse “off-camera” (post-)production techniques and “contra-apparatus” tactics disrupting mechanical nature of images taken by cameras or produced by other “automatic” means. In this connection we will also consider the question of the specificity of photography and will concern with several theoretical conceptions helping us to think through particular aspects of cameraless photography (e.g. Batchen’s conception of the politics of cameraless photography, reproducibility, copy and original, photorealism, Flusser’s conception of techno-imagination and play against apparatuses, semiotics of photography, aesthetics of imperfection, creative misuse, practices of bricolage and DIY ethos, found-photography, post-photography, liminality of photography, copy-and-paste aesthetic, algorithmic photography).

Joan FONTCUBERTA – Geoffrey BATCHEN. Dialogue between Joan Fontcuberta and Geoffrey Batchen. Correspondence. October/December 2016. Available at http://correspondencias.fotocolectania.org/en/2016-en/

(11/03)

Surrealism and Image (Josef Ledvina)

The lecture will outline the history of the Surrealist movement and work

of its main protagonists and a the same time open some more general questions concerning nature of images and imagining. We will touch upon the topic of “internal images“ (dreams and hallucinatory imagery) and attempts at its pictorialization or the problematics of pareidolias that (especially from the surrealist point of view) productively complicate distinction between the inner and outer (or objective and subjective).

André Breton, “Manifesto of Surrealism”. In: Manifestoes of Surrealism. University of Michigan Press 1969, pp. 1–48.

(18/03)

Modernism and Modern Times (Josef Ledvina)

What was the attitude of modern art towards technological progress – to assembly line production, factory chimneys, aeroplanes, readymade goods, advertisement, popular magazines...? Positions were running on the scale between the enthusiastic affirmation of technological progress and its blanket rejection as of something threatening the very “essence of humanity”. In the center of our attention will be Bauhaus, touched will be also upon technopesimistic positions of some dadaists and expressionists.

Laszlo MOHOLY-NAGY, Painting, Photography, and Film, Cambridge MA: MIT Press 1967.

(25/03)

Between Aestheticism and Propaganda (Josef Ledvina)

The lecture will deal with dynamic relations between art and politics at the beginning of 20th century and during the interwar period. At the center of our attention will be conflicting ideas of “pure art“ and art conceived as a tool of social change. Concepts of formalism, aestheticism, folk education and propaganda will be discussed together with paradigmatic examples of abstract art, political posters or magazine covers. Soviet avant-garde and subsequent enforcement of socialist realism doctrine will be covered in more detail, but we will also touch upon the question of (un)seriousness of declared political positions of some proponents of Dada movement.

Jeff WALL, „Marks of Indifference: Aspects of Photography in, or, as, Conceptual Art“, in: Ann GOLDSTEIN and Anne RORIMER, Reconsidering the object of Art, 1965-1975, Los Angeles: Museum of Contemporary Art 1995, pp. 247-267.

(01/04) No lecture – Easter

(08/04) No lecture – plein air

(15/04) essay consultation (Michal Šimůnek)

(22/04)

Photography, New and Social Media (Tomáš Dvořák)

The lecture will explore the changes in photographic practices and theoretical concepts stimulated by the emergence of new, digital media in the 1980s and 1990s and in the context of social media.

Nathan JURGENSON, The Social Photo: On Photography and Social Media. London: Verso 2019 (chapter “Documentary Vision”).

https://1lib.cz/book/5872533/44a670

(29/04)

Operative Images (Tomáš Dvořák)

The lecture will survey the shift from the technical image as representation to instrumental or operative images – images that autonomously pursue certain tasks. It will also pay attention to the convergence of the camera with other technologies and apparatus and to the shift from optical processes to digital computation (scanners, drones, satellites, computational photography, digital image processing, machine vision).

Adrian MacKenzie – Anna Munster, “Platform Seeing: Image Ensembles and Their Invisualities.” Theory, Culture & Society 2019, vol. 36, no. 5, pp. 3–22.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0263276419847508

Required reading

texts are available at:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B36pcjuZK5yyUW1rVWNzMXRBclU

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes: the student will gain knowledge of the history of photography, art and visual culture of the 20th century, learn to work with specialist literature, conduct research, analyse photographic images and present their knowledge in the form of a critical essay and interpretation.

Prerequisites and other requirements

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Literature

Gary S. CROSS – Robert N. PROCTOR, „Packaging Sight: Projections, Snapshots, and Motion Pictures“. In: G. S. Cross, R. N. Proctor, Packaged Pleasures. How Technology & Marketing Revolutionized Desire. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press 2014, s. 167–206.

Mette SANDBYE. “New Mixtures: Migration, war and cultural differences in contemporary art-documentary photography”. Photographies 2018, 11:2–3: 267-287

Jimena CANALES. A Tenth of Second. A History. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. Ch. 5 Captured by Cinematography, pp. 117–154.

Laszlo MOHOLY-NAGY, Painting, Photography, and Film, Cambridge MA: MIT Press 1967.

Joanna Zylinska, Nonhuman Photography. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press 2017, s. 13–50.

Evaluation methods and criteria

The two main requirements for completing the course are:

• attendance (you cannot miss more than 2 classes, in serious cases announced in advance, you may compensate for missing more lectures by another - typically written - assignment: this needs to be consulted beforehand with the lecturer)
• turning in all required assignments (if you fail to submit only one of the presentations, your final grade is F):
• 1st written assignment: a critical analysis/review of a selected scholarly text (please, consult the selected text with M. Šimůnek), 2-3 pages, deadline: 31 March 2023
• 2nd written assignment: final essay on a given topic, 5-10 pages, deadline: 31 May 2023

the exam will have the form of a discussion of both texts with the teacher

Note

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Schedule for winter semester 2023/2024:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

Schedule for summer semester 2023/2024:

• Week view
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The subject is a part of the following study plans

• Photography EN - Bachelor - 2022 (required subject)