History and Theory of Photography
Photography from its invention to the networked image and how critics have understood it: precursors and invention, early processes and the Notman studio, survey, war and ethnographic photography and the ethics of archives, pictorialism, modernism and straight photography, social documentary and the NFB Still Photography Division, the halftone and picture magazines, index, aura, semiotics and the punctum, conceptual and postmodern photography including the Vancouver School, the gaze, appropriation under Canadian fair dealing, colour, digital and AI images, and a theorized photo essay.
VIS-210 Year 2 3 credits 12 lessons · 5 h 35 min
Offered by HSM University · Visual Media Foundations
This is the Canadian version of this course. See the American version.
What you'll learn
- Explain why history and theory matter to photographic practice and apply a four-step method to read any photograph
- Describe the optical and chemical precursors of photography and evaluate competing claims to its invention
- Compare the daguerreotype, calotype, wet collodion, ambrotype, tintype and carte de visite and explain how commercial studios constructed identity
- Analyze survey, war, ethnographic and police photography and apply ethical practices for working with documentary archives
- Explain pictorialism's goals, printing processes, organizations and legacy, including the role of women and Canadian photographers
- Distinguish American straight photography from the European New Vision and calculate depth of field relevant to Group f/64
- Evaluate social documentary photography from Riis and Hine to the FSA and the NFB, including questions of consent, staging and benefit
- Explain how the halftone, wire services, picture magazines and agencies integrated photography into the mass media
- Apply Peirce's index, Bazin's ontology, Benjamin's aura, Barthes's semiotics, studium and punctum, and Sontag's critique to specific photographs
- Analyze conceptual, postmodern and staged photography, theories of the gaze and self-representation, and the law of appropriation in Canada and the United States
- Trace the acceptance of colour, the digital transition, computational photography and generative AI, and assess their effects on photographic authenticity
- Plan, research, make or analyze, and write a theorized photo essay or critical research essay with accurate citation and ethical practice
Course content
12 lessons · 5 h 35 min total · final exam
- 1 Why history and theory matter to photographers 29 min · quiz
- 2 Precursors and the invention of photography 28 min · quiz
- 3 Early processes and the commercial portrait studio 27 min · quiz
- 4 Photography as document and evidence 27 min · quiz
- 5 Pictorialism and the Photo-Secession 29 min · quiz
- 6 Modernism and straight photography 27 min · quiz
- 7 Documentary and social reform 27 min · quiz
- 8 Photography and the mass media 27 min · quiz
- 9 Theory I: index, reproduction and the photographic image 30 min · quiz
- 10 Theory II: postmodernism, conceptual photography and the gaze 27 min · quiz
- 11 Colour, digital and the networked image 29 min · quiz
- 12 Capstone: a theorized photo essay 28 min · quiz
- E Final exam 20 questions
Requirements
Recommended background. You can start any course at any time.
Description
Photography from its invention to the networked image and how critics have understood it: precursors and invention, early processes and the Notman studio, survey, war and ethnographic photography and the ethics of archives, pictorialism, modernism and straight photography, social documentary and the NFB Still Photography Division, the halftone and picture magazines, index, aura, semiotics and the punctum, conceptual and postmodern photography including the Vancouver School, the gaze, appropriation under Canadian fair dealing, colour, digital and AI images, and a theorized photo essay.
Part of the Film & Photography stream, typically taken in year 2.