Last week and this week our readings and special guest from RISD have focused on early printed images (printmaking, the invention of photography) and early cinema. 

For your journal this week, I would like you to find three images on Artstor to discuss, using the readings.  I would like you to compare your images, not just in terms of subject matter, but also in terms of how they were made, and how that affects the image.

Here are some good directions to take:

Use the theoretical ideas of Sontag and Benjamin to talk about the nature of photographic “truth” and also the reproduction of images.

Follow up on some of the types of images that we saw last week in the guest lecture– use the links I’ve given you to learn more. Use the Benson and Ivins readings from week 4  and the DeWitte chapter from week 5 to about technique.

Pick a range of images such as:  etching, woodcut, lithograph, Daguerreotype, gelatin silver print. digital photograph, early cinema.

Include images in your submission. Use the text entry box.   All essays must have their sources properly cited in MLA style with works cited at the end. We will discuss your images in class.  This assignment is due one hour before class so that I can prepare your images for class.

(Please note, a recording of Conor Moynihan’s RISD talk is available for your review, as are the other slides from class on printmaking and early photography).

Assigned Reading – 

 

Read these three pieces:

Susan Sontag“In Plato’s Cave”  from On Photography.  New York: 1973.

Smarthistory. Dorothea Lange “Migrant Mother (Links to an external site.)”  and  Rebecca Jeffrey Easby, ” Julia Margaret Cameron (Links to an external site.).”

N. Mirzoeff,  chapter 4: The world on screen.

and watch this short youtube video about the Invention of Cinema (Links to an external site.).

Choose one of these to explore further:

Tom Gunning, “Animated Pictures: tales of the cinema’s forgotten future”, from  The Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture Reader. Edited by Vanessa Schwartz.(New York: Routledge, 2004) 100- 110.

Martin Lister, The Photographic image in Digital Culture.   in Wells, Liz (ed) The Photography Reader. (London Routledge, 2002). 218-227.

Photography from DeWitte, Debra J, Ralph Larmann, and M K. Shields. Gateways to Art: Understanding the Visual Arts. , (New York: Thames and Hudson: 2016) .  This is a very clear overview of the emergence of photography.