Photography in the United States

elective courses
elective monographs

The course offers an overview of American photography in historical and thematic perspectives with the aim to show photography’s importance and exceptionality as a formative force in American culture. Shortly after its invention in the 1830s, photographic technology was brought to America and served as a means of documenting the country’s vast natural spaces, its growing multicultural nation, as well as its urban and technological development. The course includes discussions of significant movements, works, figures and institutions that contributed to the creation of the various facets of American photographic iconosphere. At the same time, the course encompasses two further issues: 1) essential information on the technical (analogue/ digital) and institutional (journalism, photographic agencies), development of photography, and thus the history of its material reality and dissemination; 2) the status of photography as art and its formal poetics especially in the 20th and 21st centurie

The course organizes its discussion of American photography around significant movements, figures, and institutions that contributed to

the creation of American photographic iconosphere from early daguerreotypes and silver prints to the 21st-century space photography.

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Thus, by way of an extensive sampling of the themes, the course includes lectures on the following issues: the genres and conventions of

early American photography, early ethnographic photography (documenting the Native American lives), images of the Civil War and

slavery, the rise of urban America and its social problems (urban poverty, racial segregation), American landscapes (natural diversity,

nature monuments, locality, wilderness and conservation movement), American industry, technology and capitalism (the technological sublime, industrial ruination, infrastructures, space photography), consumerist culture (photography and advertising, fashion photography, celebrity photography) urbanscapes (street photography, the commons, marginal places, American futurism), social realities, politics and times of conflict (the Great Depression, armed conflicts, the Civil Rights movement, America in protest, the Covid-19 America), portraiture

(from public figures of politics and culture to anonymous Americans), and last but not least, art photography (cross-pollinations with painting and its movements, abstract photography). At the same time,, the course encompasses two further issues: 1) essential information on the technical (analogue/ digital) and institutional (journalism, photographic agencies), development of photography, and thus the history of its material reality and dissemination; 2) the status of photography as art and its formal poetics.

Arbus, Diane. Diane Arbus: Revelations. New York: Random House, 2003.

Avedon, Richard. Photographs 1946-2004. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2007.

Bate, David. Photography: The Key Concepts. New York: Routledge, 2019.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. New York and London: Penguin, 2008.

Berger, John. Understanding a Photograph. New York and London: Penguin, 2012.

Bizony, Piers. Moonshots: 50 Years of NASA Space Exploration Seen through Hasselblad Cameras. Motorbooks, 2019.

Bogre, Michelle. Documentary Photography Reconsidered: History, Theory and Practice. New York: Routledge, 2020.

Brandow, Todd, and William A. Ewing. Edward Steichen: Lives in Photography. W.W.Norton & Company, 2008.

Capa, Robert. Photographs. Aperture, 2004.

Cartier-Bresson, Henri. The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers. Aperture, 2004.

Cotton, Charlotte. The Photograph as Contemporary Art. London: Thames and Hudson, 2014.

Cruz, Amanda. Cindy Sherman: Retrospective. London: Thames and Hudson, 1997.

Demos, T.J. Against the Anthropocene. Visual Culture and Environment Today. Sternberg Press, 2017.

Eggleston, William. William Eggleston’s Guide. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1976.

Eggleston, William. The Democratic Forest. Selected Works. Steidl, 2016.

Evans, Jessica, and Stuart Hall (eds.). Visual Culture: The Reader. SAGE Publications, 1999.

Evans, Walker. American Photographs. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2012.

Finnegan, Cara A. Making Photography Matter. A Viewer’s History from The Civil War to The Great Depression. Urbana, Chicago, and

Springfield: University of Illinois Press, 2015.

Frank, Robert. The Americans. Steidl, special edition, 2014.

Gardner, Alexander. Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War. New York: Dover Publications, 2003.

Greenough, Farah. Alfred Stieglitz. Callaway Editions. 1984.

Greenough, Sara, Sara Kennel and Sally Mann. Sally Mann: A Thousand Crossings. Abrams, 2018.

Gross, Frederick. Diane Arbus’s 1960s: Auguries of Experience. Chicago: University of Minnesota Press, 2012.

Hamill, Pete. Vietnam: The Real War: A Photographic History by the Associated Press. Abrams, 2013.

Hill, John T., and Alan Trachtenberg. Walker Evans: Lyric Documentary. Steidl, 2006.

Hine, Lewis W. Children at Work. Prestel, 2000.

Hoffman, Katherine. Alfred Stieglitz: A Legacy of Light. Yale University Press, 2011.

Ireland, Deborah. Hasselblad & The Moon Landing. Ammonite Press, 2018.

Kaplan, Louis. The Strange Case of William Mumler Spirit Photographer. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.

Kasher, Steven. The Civil Rights Movement: A Photographic History, 1954-68. Abbeville Press, 1996.

Lardinois, Brigitte. Magnum Magnum. London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 2009.

Maclear, Michael. Vietnam: A Complete Photographic History. Tess Press, 2007.

Martineau, Paul. Robert Mapplethorpe: The Photographs. Getty Publications, 2016.

Maratineau, Paul. Imogen Cunningham: A Retrospective. Getty Publications, 2020.

McLaren, Stephen. Magnum Streetwise: The Ultimate Collection of Street Photography. London and New York: Thames and Hudson,

2019.

Meister, Sarah Hermanson, and Max Kozloff. Arbus/ Friedlander/ Winogrand: New Documents, 1967. New York: The Museum of Modern

Art, 2017.

Meyerowitz, Joel. Aftermath: World Trade Center Archive. Phaidon Press, 2006.

Miller, Sally. Contemporary Photography and Theory: Concepts and Debates. New York: Routledge: 2020.

Mirzoeff, Nicholas (ed.). The Visual Culture Reader. New York and London: Routledge: 2012

Misrach, Richard. Richard Misrach on Landscape and Meaning. Aperture, 2021.

Misrach, Richard and Karen Orff. Petrochemical America. Aperture, 2012.

Moynihan, Michael, et al. American Grotesque: The Life and Art of William Mortensen. Feral House, 2014.

Nagatani, Patric and Eugenia Parry Janis. Nuclear Enchantment. University of New Mexico Press, 1991.

Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present Day. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1949.

Morris Hambourg, Maria, et al. (eds.). Irving Penn: Centennial. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2017.

Newhall, Beaumont. The Daguerreotype in America. Third Revised Edition. New York: Dover Publications, 1975.

Pardo, Alona, and Jilke Golbach (eds.). Dorothea Lange: Politics of Seeing. Prestel, 2018.

Pauli, Lori. Manufactured Landscapes: The Photographs of Edward Butrynsky. Yale University Press, 2009.

Pitts, Terence and Manfred Heiting. Edward Weston.Taschen, 2017.

Roberts, Pam. Alfred Stieglitz: Camera Work: The Complete Photographs 1903-1917. Taschen, 2008.

Rosenheim, Jeff. Photography and the American Civil War. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2013.

Silverman, Kaja. The Miracle of Analogy or The History of Photography. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015.

Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York and London: Penguin, 1979.

Speltz, Mark. North of Dixie: Civil Rights Photography Beyond the South. Getty Publications, 2016.

Steichen, Edward, and Carl Sandburg. The Family of Man. 30th revised edition. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 1996.

Steichen, Edward, and Joanna Steichen. Steichen’s Legacy: Photographs, 1895-1973. Alfred and Knopf Inc, 2000.

Street Alinder, Mary. Group f.64: Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham and the Community of Artists. Bloomsbury, 2015.

Szarkowski, John. The Photographer’s Eye. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2007.

Taft, Robert. Photography and the American Scene: A Social History, 1839-1889. New York: Dover Publications, 1989.

Tomkins, Calvin. Paul Strand: Sixty Years of Photographs. Aperture, 2004.

Trachtenberg, Alan. Distinctly American: The Photography of Wright Morris. Merrell Publishers, 2002.

Szarkowski, John. The Photographer’s Eye. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2007.

Taft, Robert. Photography and the American Scene: A Social History, 1839-1889. New York: Dover Publications, 1989.

Tomkins, Calvin. Paul Strand: Sixty Years of Photographs. Aperture, 2004.

Trachtenberg, Alan. Distinctly American: The Photography of Wright Morris. Merrell Publishers, 2002.

Trachtenberg, Alan. Reading American Photographs: Images as History Mathew Brady to Walker Evans. Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1990.

Trachtenberg, Alan (ed.). Classic Essays on Photography. Leete’s Island Books, 1980.

Wallis, Brian. Weegee: Murder is My Business. Prestel, 2013.

Walther, Peter. Lewis W. Hine: America at Work. Taschen, 2018.

Weegee. Weegee’s Naked City. Damiani, 2020.

Wells, Liz. Photography: A Critical Introduction. New York and London: Routledge, 2015.

Wells, Liz (ed.). The Photography Reader: History and Theory. New York: Routledge, 2018, second edition.

Wells, Liz (ed.). The Photography Cultures Reader: Representation, Agency and Identity. New York: Routledge, 2019.

Westerbeck, Colin, and Joel Meyerowitz. Bystander: A History of Street Photography. New York: Laurence King Publishing, 2017.

Whelan, Richard. Robert Capa: The Definitive Collection. Phaidon, 2001.

Upon completion of the course, students:

KNOWLEDGE:

• know the history of the most significant movements and figures of American photography

• are aware of the mutual influence of photography and culture in American context

• understand the role of photography as a tool of cultural critique

- know the most important ideas in the theories of photographic composition/ poetics of the image

SKILLS:

• are able to use analytical tools for the purposes of reading photographs

• are able to apply their knowledge of American history and culture to formulating arguments and questions on the role of photography in

shaping American iconosphere

SOCIAL COMPETENCE:

• understand and appreciates the role of photography as a mass medium in the USA

• are sensitive to the rhetorical dimension of photographic image in culture and politics and know the its role in social communication

The final grade depends on the exam results. The exam consists of two parts: Part 1 centers on the familiarity with the selected most iconic American photographs discussed in class; Part 2 focuses on historical and theoretical issues in the development of American photography.

Grade scale:

100-97 5!

96-91 5

90-84 4+

83-78 4

77-68 3+

67-60 3

59-0 2