Texts and Contexts 2

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Contents

The course has the form of regular seminar discussions of scholarly literature. Each semester focuses on one significant title or a selection of texts – students have the reader available before the start of the semester. Students must read required texts before each session and do their own research of other relevant scholarly literature.

The readings consist of current theoretical, historical and critical works from photography and visual culture studies and cover five thematic fields of the final state exam in history and theory of photography: Vernacular (amateur and commercial) photography; Vision machines and apparatuses: technical conditions of photography; Art as postproduction: found, appropriated, recycled and archived images; Photographic canon and its institutions (historiography, exhibitions, market); Photography and new media (remediation, computational photography, operative images, technological convergence).

Learning outcomes

Students will be able to develop and critically evaluate theories, concepts and methods of their field and gain insight into contemporary scholarly literature and canonical works relevant for the thematic areas of the final state exam in history and theory of photography.

Prerequisites and other requirements

The course is taught in English and requires advanced language skills – reading academic texts and discussing them in class.

Literature

Current theoretical, historical and critical works from photography, visual culture and media studies.

Required titles are specified at the beginning of each semester.

Summer semester 2021:

James Bridle, New Gark Age. Verso 2018.

McKenzie Wark, Sensoria. Verso 2020.

Harun Farocki, Phantom Images

Hito Steyerl, A Sea of Data: Apophenia and Pattern (Mis-)Recognition

Trevor Paglen, Invisible Images (Your Pictures Are Looking at You)

Recommended literature:

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill & Wang, 1980.

Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. London: Fontana Press, 1977, pp. 15–51.

Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. New York: Noonday Press, 1972.

Batchen, Geoffrey. Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2001.

Batchen, Geoffrey. Burning with Desire. The Conception of Photography. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997.

Benjamin, Walter. On Photography. London: Reaktion Books, 2015.

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media. Cambridge – London: Harvard University Press, 2008, pp. 19–165, 271–314.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: BBC & Penguin Books, 1972.

Beshty, Walead (ed.). Picture Industry: A Provisional History of the Technical Image, 1844-2018. Zurich: JRP/Ringier 2018.

Burbridge, Ben - Annebella Pollen (eds.). Photography Reframed: New Visions in Contemporary Photographic Practice. London: Bloomsbury 2018.

Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1990.

Durden, Mark (ed.). Fifty Key Writers on Photography. London: Routledge, 2013.

Edwards, Steve. Photography: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Flusser, Vilém. Into the Universe of Technical Images. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011.

Flusser, Vilém. Towards a Philosophy of Photography. London: Reaktion Books, 2000.

Foster, Hal et al., Art Since 1900. Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. London: Thames & Hudson, 2011.

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

Frizot, Michel a kol. A New History of Photography. Köln: Könemann, 1998.

Goldberg, Vicki (ed.), Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981.

Lister, Martin (ed.), 2013. The Photographic Image in Digital Culture. London: Routledge, 2013.

Read, Shirley - Mike Simmons (eds.). Photographers and Research: The Role of Research in Contemporary Photographic Practice. London: Routledge 2017.

Rubinstein, Daniel (ed.). Fragmentation of the Photographic Image in the Digital Age. London: Routledge 2019.

Sekula, Alan. Photography Against the Grain. Halifax: The Press of Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1984.

Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador, 2003.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. London: Penguin Books, 1977.

Sturken, Marita – Lisa Cartwright. Practices of Looking. An Introduction to Visual Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2009.

Tagg, John. The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988.

Trachtenberg, Alan. Classic Essays on Photography. New Haven, Conn.: Leete’s Island Books, 1980.

Warren, Lynne (ed.). Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Photography. Vol. 1+2. New York – London: Routledge, 2006.

Wells, Liz (ed.). Photography: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge, 2015.

Zylinska, Joanna. Nonhuman Photography. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 2017.

Evaluation methods and criteria

The course is evaluated by a graded exam. Students must actively participate in the seminar discussions, study required literature, and submit a critical essay (5-10 pages) by 5 July 2021. The exam has the form of a discussion over the submitted text.

Note

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Further information

No schedule has been prepared for this course

The subject is a part of the following study plans