US_115 Photography: the modern media - variants and roles

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2010
Extent and Intensity
2/0. 3 credit(s). Type of Completion: k (colloquium).
Teacher(s)
Mgr. Jiří Pátek (lecturer), PhDr. Aleš Filip, Ph.D. (deputy)
Guaranteed by
Mgr. Kristýna Celhofferová, Ph.D.
Department of Musicology – Faculty of Arts
Contact Person: Vlasta Taranzová
Timetable
Wed 10:00–11:35 ?
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
The capacity limit for the course is 85 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 0/85, only registered: 0/85, only registered with preference (fields directly associated with the programme): 0/85
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
there are 14 fields of study the course is directly associated with, display
Course objectives
The aims: Each student will gain essential orientation in the history of theoretical approach to photography and in the ways of thinking about photography by the end of the course. With the help of museology experience and examples of photographic materials one will be able to recognize basic photographic processes and will understand the technical principles of photography. Both, the theoretical and practical parts, will serve as the foundation for defining the relationship between photography as an art medium and photography as a medium of every day use. This particularly means that… • Students will be able to differentiate basic photographic processes from daguerreotypes to traditional silver gelatin photography and will become aware of how the technical possibilities of each process transferred to everyday and institutional photographic experience. At the same time, based on the knowledge of the pre-history of photography, students will be able to understand photography as the culmination of deep desire of the Western civilizations for a precise depicting technique. • In addition, students will realize the meaning and consequences of the existence of photography as so-called fine art photography, which represented a dominant interpretation paradigm in the past few decades. They will be able to evaluate the pros and cons of this concept in the contemporary context and to characterize ideas and works of the key representatives of this era. • Based on the critical theoretical analyses, students will understand the relations between terms, concepts and ideology tendencies, which currently dominate the photography discourse. (visual studies, modernism, post-modernism, cultural history) The acquired information will enable students to see photography as a complex medium, which through its applications in art, science and public spaces has formed the mentality of our civilization in a very short time period.
Syllabus
  • 1. The beginning of a new medium – the technological basics of photography, photography as a conclusion of the mimetic desire of the Western civilizations. (drawing machines, physionotrace, etc.) 2. The beginning of a new medium – from daguerreotypes to silver gelatin photography: the history of optics in relation to the invention of photography, the history of chemism in the relation to the invention of photography, camera obscura, camera lucida etc. 3. Three fathers of photography, three principles of photography - Daguerre, Talbot, Bayard, the circumstances and the socio-historical conditions of the assertion of a photographic image. 4. The invention of photography and domestic environment – Stašek, Franz, Smetana, Petzval, von Ettinghausen etc. 5. The death of painting: the encounter of the photographic and painted image – the mutual influence of the painting and photographic media in the diction of the criticism of that time, in the diction of modernism and contemporary theory of photography. 6. What is the history of photography? A chronological overview of methods of writing a history of photography (Eder, Newhall, Gernsheim, Skopec, Mrázková, Frizot). Looking at the construction of histories of photography though the author’s point of view and the socio-cultural demands. 7. The canonical history of photography and its consequences - modernistic vision of the history of fine art photography and its role in the post-modernistic reality. (The principle of exclusion and reduction of reality, the concept of a creative genius, the opposition of amateurism and professionalism, the relationship between the history of photography and the history of art) 8. The history of photography and the cultural history - the analysis of stimulations and sources of contemporary photographic discourse (Photography as magic and natural phenomenon, photography as an invention without predecessors, photography and a missing object, the role of multiplication of an image) 9. Photography and theory - modernism, photography in the ideologies of the modernism and avant-garde theorists (Greenberg, Benjamin, Funke, Moholy-Nagy etc.) 10. Photography and theory - postmodernism, the theory of photography and the theory of the sign (Saussure, Barthes, Baudrillard, Burgin) 11. Photography and Art – pictorialism and modernism 12. Photography and Art – the application of photography in the post-modern and conceptual art
Literature
  • Roland Barthes, Světelná komora. Vysvětlivka k fotografii, Archa, Bratislava 1994.
  • Matthew S. Witkowsky, Foto: Modernity in Central Europe 1918 – 1945, Thames & Hudson, NGA Washington 2007.
  • Marta Filipová – Matthew Rampley (eds.), Možnosti vizuálních studií. Obrazy-texty-interpretace, Barrister & Pricipal, FFMU Brno 2007.
  • Jaroslav Anděl, Příběh moderního média. Česká fotografie 1840 – 1950, Galerie Rudolfinum, Praha 2004.
  • Hans Belting, Konec dějin umění? MF, Praha 2000.
  • Richard Bolton (ed.), The Contest of Meaning. Critical Histories of Photography, MITT Press, 1996.
  • Štěpán Grygar, Konceptuální umění a fotografie, AMU, Praha 2004.
  • Susan Sontagová, O fotografii, Barrister & Pricipal a Paseka, Litomyšl 2002.
  • Mary Warner Marien, Photography and Its Critics. A Cultural History 1839 – 1900, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
  • Petra Trnková, Technický obraz na malířských štaflích. Česko-němečtí fotoamatéři a umělecká fotografie. Barrister & Principal, FFMU Brno 2008.
Teaching methods
lectures, class discussion
Assessment methods
written test
Language of instruction
Czech
Further Comments
Study Materials
The course is taught only once.
The course is also listed under the following terms Autumn 2008, Spring 2011.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Spring 2010, recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/phil/spring2010/US_115