ARLT 101g

The Technological Image

Interpreting and Recording the World through Photography
Fall 2013 Tuesdays & Thursdays 12:30-1:50pm Discussion sections: Fridays Prof. Megan R. Luke, Art History (mluke@usc.edu) Office: VKC 381 Office hours: TTh by appointment TAs: Megan Mastroianni (megan.mastroianni@usc.edu) Lida Sunderland (lsunderl@usc.edu)

With its invention in the 1830s, photography promised a more accurate and persuasive image of the world than had ever seemed possible before. The camera appeared to offer a superior vision: unaffected by subjective prejudice, this machine was capable of rendering the invisible visible and its images could be chemically fixed to offer enduring records of fleeting moments, endangered peoples, and uncharted places. This course troubles the persistent faith in the realism of the photographic document, challenging technological objectivity by investigating how this modern medium has intervened in journalism, science, law, government, entertainment, and art. How have photographs historically functioned as evidence, as interpretation, or as argument? Students will be introduced to the history of photography through this question. They will gain skills in analyzing visual images and in combining visual and textual evidence to make historical arguments. Requirements & Deadlines Oral participation in lectures and discussion sections (10%) Online discussion postings (10%) due by noon on specified Thursdays; peer response due 8am following Fridays First paper, visual analysis (15%)* September 27 Midterm exam (20%) October 8 Second paper, historical argument (20%)* November 15 Final exam (25%) December 17

(*) You will have the opportunity to revise one of these two papers as you choose. After revision, the grade can be raised or remain the same, depending on how effectively you respond to instructor feedback; your grades will not suffer if you choose to revise your written work. Course Skills You can expect to develop the following skills: Identify historically important photographic images Improved writing at college level Accurately describe visual phenomena in writing Contextualize images within written historical discourse Assess the relevance of specific scholarship to a case study of a photograph Articulate accurate and substantive responses to images Constructively engage with the ideas of peers and gain confidence speaking in class

Class Format and Protocol This course consists of a combination of lectures and group discussions: Lectures (led by the professor) Lectures will follow a chronological sequence, focusing on specific themes for the history of photography. They will provide all necessary background for the readings and written assignments. Students should come prepared to respond to questions posed about key images and to raise questions of their own during lecture. Discussions (led by a TA) Weekly discussions will be conducted like a roundtable seminar. They will offer the students opportunity to review the material covered in lecture, to discuss the readings in depth, and to ask questions about the course themes as they connect visual and textual material. In preparation for these discussions, students will be required to participate in an online written forum and respond to at least one of their peers posts prior to class. Postings are due by noon on the Thursdays they are due; peer response are due by 8am on the following Friday. Readings All readings are provided as PDFs through the Blackboard site for this course. There is no required textbook. Students wishing to consult a textbook for additional background information, helpful bibliographies, and a chronology of photography history are directed to: Mary Warner Marien, Photography: A Cultural History, 3rd ed., (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2011) On reserve at Leavey Library

Grading All grading will be done collaboratively by the TA and professor. Final decisions on the grade will rest with the professor. Attendance is required for lecture and discussion. More than two unexcused absences will result in a reduction of your course grade. Late work will be penalized unless prior written consent from the instructor has been obtained; i.e. the grade for the paper will be lowered a half-letter grade and your overall participation grade will suffer. Courtesy In the interest of reducing the light interference with the projected images shown in class during lecture, laptops are not permitted. Laptops are permitted in discussion sections at the discretion of your TA. Phones must be turned completely off. If your phone rings or vibrates in lecture or discussion, you will be asked to leave and your grade will be lowered.

Lectures and Readings Beginnings Aug 27 Introduction Susan Sontag, In Platos Cave (1977). In On Photography, 4-24. New York: Picador, 2001. Aug 29 The Invention of Photography W.H.F. Talbot, The Pencil of Nature. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1844-46. Franois Arago, Report. In Classic Essays on Photography, edited by Alan Trachtenberg, 15-25. New Haven: Leetes Island Books, 1980. Photography as Art and Science Sept 3 Photographic Technology Patrick Maynard, Chapters 1-3. In The Engine of Visualization: Thinking through Photography, 3-82. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997. The Photograph as Evidence Miles Orvell, Photography and the Artifice of Realism. In The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940, 73-102, 310-314. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. Allan Sekula, On the Invention of Photographic Meaning. In Photography Against the Grain: Essays and Photo Works 1973-1983, 3-21. Halifax: Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, 1984. Joel Snyder, Documentary without Ontology, Studies in Visual Communication (1984): 78-91. Geographies Sept 10 Displaying Documents Rosalind Krauss, Photographys Discursive Spaces, Art Journal, Vol. 42, No. 4 (Winter, 1982): 311-319. James Clifford, Paradise. In Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, 147-187. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Sept 12 Mapping the World Abigail Solomon-Godeau, A Photographer in Jerusalem, 1855 (1981). In Photography at the Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions, and Practices, 150-168, 298-299. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Robin Kelsey, Viewing the Archive, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 85, No. 4 (Dec., 2003): 702-723. Sept 13 Discussion Section War and Empire Sept 17 Photographing the Front Alan Trachtenberg, Albums of War. In Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans, 71-118, 299-302. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989. Oliver Wendell Holmes, The Stereoscope and the Stereograph (1859). In Classic Essays on Photography, edited by Alan Trachtenberg, 71-82. New Haven: Leetes Island Books, 1980.

Sept 5

Sept 19 The Colonial Gaze James Ryan, Photographing the Natives. In Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualization of the British Empire, 140-182, 243-249. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997.

Online posting due

Sept 20 Discussion Section Medicine and Crime Sept 24 The Visible Body Martin Kemp, A Perfect and Faithful Record: Mind and Body in Medical Photographs before 1900. In Beauty of Another Order: Photography in Science, edited by Ann Thomas and Marta Braun, 120-149, 232-235. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Sept 26 Spot the Criminal Allan Sekula, The Body and the Archive, October, Vol. 39 (Winter, 1986): 3-64. Sept 27 Discussion Section

Visual Analysis Paper Due

Scientific Technology Oct 1 Enhanced Vision Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, The Image of Objectivity, Representations, No. 40 (Autumn 1992): 81128. Visible Motion Marta Braun, The Expanded Present. In Beauty of Another Order: Photography in Science, edited by Ann Thomas and Marta Braun, 150-185, 235-237. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997. Joel Snyder, Visualization and Visibility. In Picturing Science, Producing Art, edited by Caroline A. Jones and Peter Galison, 379-397. New York: Routledge, 1998.

Oct 3

Online posting due (questions for midterm review; no peer response required)

Oct 4

Discussion Section Midterm Review

Midterm & Excursion Oct 8 Midterm Examination

Oct 10 No lecture

Online posting due

Oct 11 LACMA excursion Social Photography Oct 15 See How the Other Half Lives Martha Rosler, In, around, and afterthoughts (on documentary photography). In The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography, edited by Richard Bolton, 303-340. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989. Keith Gandal, The Touristic Ethic and Photography and In Search of Excitement: The Ethics of Entertainment. In The Virtues of the Vicious: Jacob Riis, Stephen Crane, and the Spectacle of the Slum, 61-88, 172179. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Oct 17 Labor and the City Alan Trachtenberg, Camera Work/Social Work. In Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans, 164-230, 307-311. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989.

Online posting due

Oct 18 Discussion Section Utopias Oct 22 Constructing the New World Alexander Rodchenko, The Paths of Modern Photography and A Caution (1928). In Photography in the Modern Era: European Documents and Critical Writings, 1913-1940, edited by Christopher Phillips, 256-263, 264266. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. Anonymous, Program of the October Photo Section (1931). In Photography in the Modern Era: European Documents and Critical Writings, 1913-1940, edited by Christopher Phillips, 283-285. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989. Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, From Faktura to Factography, October 30 (Autumn, 1984): 82-108.

Oct 24 Imaging the New Deal William Stott, What is Documentary? In Documentary Expression and Thirties America, 5-17, 316-317. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Alan Trachtenberg, A Book Nearly Anonymous. In Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans, 231-285, 312-314. New York: Hill and Wang, 1989.

Online posting due

Oct 25 Discussion Section Art and Archaeology Oct 29 Originality and Authenticity Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility (1936). In Walter Benjamin Selected Writings Vol. 3, 1935-1938, edited by Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, 101-133. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002. Andr Malraux, Museum without Walls, 77-162. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967. Oct 31 The Strata of Antiquity Claire L. Lyons, The Art and Science of Antiquity. In Antiquity & Photography: Early Views of Ancient Mediterranean Sites, 22-65, 207-209. Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2005.

Online posting due

Nov 1 Discussion Section Journalism and the Law Nov 5 Exposing Atrocity Vicki Goldberg, News Photographs as Catalysts. In The Power of Photography: Photographs Changed Our Lives, 191-215, 264-266. New York: Abbeville Press, 1991. Miles Orvell, Documentary and the Seductions of Beauty. In After the Machine: Visual Arts and the Erasing of Cultural Boundaries, 97-112, 178-180. Jackson, Miss.: University Press of Mississippi, 1995. Nov 7 Photography as Legal Evidence Hampton Dellinger, Words are Enough: The Troublesome Use of Photographs, Maps, and Other Images in Supreme Court Opinions, Harvard Law Review, Vol. 110, No. 8 (June, 1997): 1704-1753. John Tagg, Power and Photography: A Means of Surveillance: The Photograph as Evidence in Law, Screen Education, No. 36 (Autumn 1980): 17-55.

Online posting due

Nov 8 Discussion Section

Cold War Modernism Nov 12 A Brave New World Peter Bacon Hales, Imagining the Atomic Age. In Looking at Life Magazine, edited by Erika Lee Doss, 103-119. Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. Christopher Phillips, The Judgment Seat of Photography, October, Vol. 22 (Autumn, 1986): 27-63. Nov 14 Capturing the Ruins of Modernity Abigail Solomon-Godeau, The Armed Vision Disarmed: Radical Formalism from Weapon to Style. In Photography at the Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions, and Practices, 52-84, 291-294. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Roland Barthes, The Photographic Message (1961) and Rhetoric of the Image (1964). In Image-Music-Text, 15-51. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Nov 15 Discussion Section

Historical Argument Paper Due

Fabricated Images Nov 19 Celebrity and Politics Roland Barthes, Photography and Electoral Appeal (1957). In Mythologies, 91-93. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972. Carl Glassman and Keith Kenney, Myths & Presidential Campaign Photographs, Visual Communication Quarterly, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Fall 1994): 4-7. Nechama Tec and Daniel Weiss, The Heroine of Minsk: Eight Photographs of an Execution, History of Photography, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Winter 1999): 322-330. Nov 21 Photoshop Creations Martha Rosler, Image Simulations, Computer Manipulations: Some Considerations. In Photography after Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital Age, edited by Hubertus von Amelunxen, et al., 36-56. Amsterdam: G+B Arts, 1996.

Online posting due (questions for final exam review; no peer response required)

Nov 22 Discussion Section

Photography Today Nov 26 Digital Data Lev Manovich, The Paradoxes of Digital Photography. In Photography after Photography: Memory and Representation in the Digital Age, edited by Hubertus v. Amelunxen, et al., 57-65. Amsterdam: G+B Arts, 1996. Vilm Flusser, Images in the New Media. In Writings, edited by Andreas Strhl, 70-74. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. Nov 28 Thanksgiving Holiday No class Nov 29 Thanksgiving Holiday No section Dec 3 Obsolescence Jeff Wall, Photography and Liquid Intelligence. In Jeff Wall: The Complete Edition, edited by Thierry de Duve, et al., 218-219. London: Phaidon, 1989. Final Examination Review

Dec 5

Final Assignments Dec 10 Paper Revision Due (optional) Dec 17 Final Examination, 11am-1pm (room TBD)