Snapshots and Snap Judgments: A History of Photographic Portraiture

Snapshots and Snap Judgments: A History of Photographic Portraiture (HA903-2A)

What does your Facebook picture say about you? We are bombarded by portraits on-line and in magazines, keep them to remember loved ones, and are required to carry them for identification, but may not often think about how they impact our view of ourselves and others. This survey will trace the history of photography to help us reflect on portraiture today.

In this course you will learn about artists using digital techniques in addition to seeing examples of the earliest photographic technologies firsthand in area collections. We will look at early photographs by Mathew Brady, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Lewis Carroll, modern masterpieces by Alfred Stieglitz, August Sander, and Claude Cahun, iconic images by Dorothea Lange, W. Eugene Smith, and Gordon Parks, rich bodies of work by Seydou Keïta, Shomei Tomatsu, and Sally Mann, provocative prints by Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, Andy Warhol, and Nan Goldin, as well as recent innovators such as Jeff Wall, Nikki S. Lee, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Loretta Lux, and Ryan McGinley.

Case studies will include: the tradition of collecting celebrity portraits, the popularity of spirit photography in the nineteenth century, mugshots, memory and family albums, relationships between textual and photographic portraits in books and magazines, retouching in fashion photography, cell-phone snapshots and MySpace self-portraits, and contemporary artists using photography to examine the performativity of race, gender, and class roles.

This reading intensive course will be supplemented by visits to photography collections in the Brown University John Hay Library and the Rhode Island School of Design Museum. Assignments will introduce a range of art-historical methods to encourage critical consumption of visual culture. Class discussions, presentations, and research projects will enable students to develop writing and speaking skills foundational to college-level work in humanities courses.