Admission requirements
BA-degree
Description
This course focuses upon some seminal phases within the histories of both photography (first half) and film (second part). We will discuss the ‘origin’ of photography, when it was predominantly regarded as a ‘neutral document’. We will address the use and meaning of the photographic document by referring to the Mission Héliographique, Jacob Riis, the Farm Security Administration and August Sander. In recent decades, photography has been increasingly identified with an artistic domain, and one can think of the work by Christian Boltanski or Jeff Wall. We will examine the relation between an artistic and documentary approach of photography, and thereby introduce a number of formal themes, like sharpness, tonal values, format, color versus black-white. The part on film will initially highlight the affinity with photographic experiments (by Eadweard Muybridge, Étienne-Jules Marey) and further indicate how film has evolved in subsequent decades, hovering between an entertainment industry, a storytelling medium and the so-called seventh art. We will address the ‘silent film aesthetic’, as well as key movements such as Italian neorealism, nouvelle vague from France, the Neue Deutsche Welle from Germany and new Hollywood.
Course objectives
What do the students have to know at the end of the course?
Course objectives will be made available on Blackboard at the start of the course.
Timetable
12 lectures (two hours) in first semester from September to December: timetable
Mode of instruction
- Lectures
Assessment method
- written exam with essay questions
Blackboard
Do you use Blackboard, and if so, in what way.
- Course information (e.g. schedule of series and objectives) and course documents (e.g. additional documents for lectures)
Reading list
Reader
List of literature: Mary Warner Marien, Photography: A Cultural History, London (Laurence King Publishing) 2006
Alan Trachtenberg (ed.), Classic Essays on Photography, New Haven 1980.
Registration
Petra Jochems, secretary of Film and Photographic Studies
Registration Contract courses Contractonderwijs.
Contact information
Names and adresses where students may get more information .
Tineke de Ruiter
Remarks
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