This course provides an introduction to documentary photography through the study of its’ history and how it evolved in the past decades. Students will be exposed to the work of great documentary photographers, photojournalists and learn to see the world around them in a new way and produce their own documentary project, while doing smaller assignments on a weekly basis.
The module requires reading and writing about photography, analyzing and researching images. There will be an emphasis on thinking about why people photograph, what photographs do and do not mean to us, and on doing documentary work, on telling stories with photographs.
Each session will be divided into two 25-minute parts: the first 5 minutes will be a presentation by a student, followed by 20-minutes of presentation on documentary photography, followed by a group discussion and critique of the weekly assignments.
Over the course of the module you will watch two movies: Salt of the Earth, a documentary film about the iconic Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado and What Remains, on the life and work of Sally Mann, who Time magazine described as “America’s greatest photographer”.
The module could culminate with an exhibition of your own documentary project at Milestone’s Lowenthal.
Please note that this is not a technical module and while there will be some technical discussion in class, it will be limited.