A little study of photography

“Making photographs has to be, then, a personal matter; when it is not, the results are not persuasive. Only the artist’s presence in the work can convince us that its affirmation resulted from and has been tested by human experience.” (Robert Adams)

I recently put together an independent study for a group of students at Deep Springs College, who were interested in learning about photography. The title of the course is a riff on Walter Benjamin’s seminal article, “A Little History of Photography.” And I organized the curriculum based on a claim in The Cruel Radiance (University of Chicago Press, 2010) that the early canon of photography criticism was antagonistic because the critics themselves were not photographers. This assertion implies that practicing photography informs how it is theorized. With this in mind, I developed a short seminar that moved between theory and practice. The students used their cell phones to make pictures. Some of the readings are listed below with active links to the photographers that we considered.

Readings

Robert Adams, Beauty in Photography (2005) Ruth Behar, “The Vulnerable Observer” in The Vulnerable Observer (1996) Ben Burbridge, “Paradise Lost: Exhibitionism and the Work of Nan Goldin” Tina Di Carlo, “Archival Measures: Photography Collections in the New Media Age” Susie Linfield, “A Little History of Photography Criticism” in The Cruel Radiance (2010) Miles Orvell, “Versions of the Self” in American Photography (2003) Gil Pasternak, “Popular Photography Cultures in Photography Studies” Kaja Silverman, “The Second Coming” in The Miracle of Analogy (2015) Laura Wexler, “The Purloined Image” in Photography and the Optical Unconscious (2020)

Photographers

LaToya Ruby Frazier, The Notion of Family Masahisa Fukase, Ravens Graciela Iturbide, Frida’s Bathroom Saul Leiter, Black and White Susan Lipper, Grapvine Rania Matar, Ordinary Lives Mark Power, The Shipping Forecast LaToya Ruby Frazier, The Notion of Family Carrie Mae Weems, Lousiana Project Magdalena Wywrot, Pestka

Some more photographers…