H95.0012 Lecture 4 Credits
Offered through Open Arts. For registration, please contact the department.Prerequisites: Upper level Critical Studies course, Social and Aesthetic History of Photography and one intermediate level course.
The introduction of digital imaging systems, allowing a new flexibility in image-making and distribution, is revolutionizing photography. This course will look at photography's strengths and weaknesses, both real and imagined, in attempting to determine new strategies for its use as both society and technology evolve. Subjects will include the role of the photograph during the recent war in Iraq, its heavy use in the field of "multimedia," its problematic function as social critic, the imagery emerging from other cultures, the clarion call for improved visual literacy, and photography's use in cyborg culture.. We will also look at related trends in other media including film, video, music and hypertext. After more than 150 years in which photographs have proliferated, this course will look at how we have been changed by them, and how we can arrive at some understanding of this newly digital "image culture" around us in order to discern where it might be taking us.
