History and Theory of Photography 2

Display Schedule

Subject guarantor

Tomáš DVOŘÁK

Name of lecturer(s)

Tomáš DVOŘÁK, Josef LEDVINA, Noemi PURKRÁBKOVÁ, Michal ŠIMŮNEK

Department

The subject provides Department of Photography

Contents

History and theory of photography 2

12/2

Introduction to the Summer Semester

An overview of the course structure, requirements for completion, and study materials.

Perspectives: vernacular photography, everyday life, photo practices, empirical photography research.

Required reading:

There is no required reading for the first week of the semester.

Recommended reading:

Campt, Tina et al. eds. 2019. Imagining Everyday Life. Engagements with Vernacular Photography. Göttingern, New Your, Neu-Ulm: Steidl, The Walther Collection.

Gómez Cruz, Edgar, and Asko Lehmuskallio, eds. 2016. Digital Photography and Everyday Life: Empirical Studies on Material Visual Practices. London; New York: Routledge.

19/2

Semiotics of photography

Photography as a sign and material object. Referent, signifier, signified, denotation, connotation, myth. Index, performative index. Visual and tactile perception of photography. Image and con/text, paratexts. Re-, de-, and out-contextualization. Meta-images.

Required reading:

Barthes, Roland. 1987. „Rhetoric of the Image“. In: Roland Barthes. Image, Music, Text. London: Fontana Press, pp. 32–51.

Recommended reading:

Barthes, Roland. 2006. Mythologies. New York, NY: Hill and Wang.

Mitchell, W. J. T. 2007. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.

Olin, Margaret. 2012. Touching Photographs. Chicago London: The University of Chicago Press.

Sonesson, Göran. 1989. Semiotics of Photography – On Tracing the Index. Lund: Lund University.

26/2

Popular (family, tourist, and everyday) photography

History and iconography of family photography. The materiality of photography, the doubling of indexicality. Ideology and social functions of family photography. Tourist photography. Archives and found photographs.

Required reading:

Batchen, Geoffrey. 2004. Forget Me Not: Photography & Remembrance. Amsterdam, New York: Van Gogh Museum, Princeton Architectural Press.

Recommended reading:

Beil, Kim. 2020. Good Pictures: A History of Popular Photography. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press.

Cross, Karen. 2015. “The Lost of Found Photography.” Photographies 8 (1): 43–62. https://doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2014.974285.

Urry, John, and Jonas Larsen. 2011. The Tourist Gaze 3.0. Los Angeles, London: SAGE.

Zuromskis, Catherine. 2013. Snapshot Photography: The Lives of Images. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

5/3

Photojournalism and documentary photography

Manipulated images, image manipulations. Ethics of depicting events. New media and new documentary approaches. Critical documentary strategies, post-documentary photography. Anthropocene and other catastrophes without event.

Required reading:

Sandbye, Mette. “New Mixtures: Migration, war and cultural differences in contemporary art-documentary photography”. Photographies 2018, 11:2–3: 267-287

Recommended reading:

Azoulay, Ariella. 2008. The Civil Contract of Photography. New York, Cambridge, Mass: Zone Books.

Demos, T. J. 2013. The Migrant Image: The Art and Politics of Documentary during Global Crisis. Durham, London: Duke University Press.

Nash, Kate. 2021. Interactive Documentary: Theory and Debate. Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY: Routledge.

Horn, Eva, and Valentine A. Pakis. 2018. The Future as Catastrophe: Imagining Disaster in the Modern Age. New York: Columbia University Press.

12/3

Technical images in the social sciences

Photography in social sciences, social sciences in photography. Photography as an object of sociological research. Photography as a tool for data collection in social sciences. Photography as a representation of knowledge in social sciences.

Required reading:

Harper, Douglas A. 2023. Visual Sociology. New York, NY: Routledge.

Recommended reading:

Pauwels, L. 2015. Reframing Visual Social Science: Towards a More Visual Sociology and Anthropology. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.

Gómez Cruz, Edgar, Shanti Sumartojo, and Sarah Pink, eds. 2017. Refiguring Techniques in Digital Visual Research. Cham: Springer International Publishing.

19/3

Imperfections

Creative misuse of technology, playing against the apparatus, error, chance, and authenticity. Poor images. Practices of imperfection. The metamediality and procedurality of imperfection.

Required reading:

Steyerl, Hito (2009), ‘In Defence of the Poor Image’, e­ flux, 10. Available at: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/

Recommended reading:

Cheyne, Peter, ed. 2023. Imperfectionist Aesthetics in Art and Everyday Life. New York: Routledge.

Geimer, Peter, and Gerrit Jackson. 2018. Inadvertent Images: A History of Photographic Apparitions. Chicago, London: The University of Chicago Press.

Lenot, Marc. “Flusser and Photographers, Photographers and Flusser.” Flusser Studies 2017, 24. Available at: http://www.flusserstudies.net/sites/www.flusserstudies.net/files/media/attachments/marc-lenot-flusser-photographers-photographers-flusser.pdf

Kelly, Caleb, Jakko Kemper, and Ellen Rutten, eds. 2022. Imperfections: Studies in Mistakes, Flaws, and Failures. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

26/3

Camera-less photography

Techniques, aesthetics, and politics of camera-less photography. Experimental photography, imprints of objects and processes. Screenshot and in-game photography.

Required reading:

Christian, Margareta Ingrid. 2018. “Cameraless Photography and Its Imponderable Media.” History of Photography 42 (4): 319–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.2018.1540182.

Recommended reading:

Batchen, Geoffrey. 2016. Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph. Munich ; New York: DelMonico Books, Prestel.

Gerling, Winfried. 2018. “PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE DIGITAL: Screenshot and in-Game Photography.” Photographies 11 (2–3): 149–67. https://doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2018.1445013.

Seers, Lindsay. 2007. Human Camera. Birmingham: Article Press.

2/4

No lecture – plein air

9/4

Non-human photography, automation, and autonomous apparatus

Automation and camera autonomy, buttonless cameras, operative images, AI, and other generated images.

Required reading:

Altaratz, Doron. 2023. “The Human Tripod: Computational Photography, Automated Processes, and Professional Identity.” Photographies 16 (2): 291–311. https://doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2023.2194878.

Recommended reading:

Crawford, Kate – Trevor Pagnel. 2019. Excavating AI. The Politics of Images in Machine Learning Training Seets. [online]. New York: The AI Now Institute, 2019. Dostupné z: https://excavating.ai.

Parikka, Jussi. 2023. Operational Images: From the Visual to the Invisual. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Toister, Yanai. 2019. “PHOTOGRAPHY: Love’s Labour’s Lost.” Photographies 12 (1): 117–33. https://doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2018.1501726.

16/4

Photography and self

Photography and self-presentation. Selfie. Extended self. Second self. Quantified self. Qualified self. Ordered self. Algorithmic self.

Required reading:

Murray, Derek Conrad, ed. 2022. Visual Culture Approaches to the Selfie. Routledge History of Photography. New York, NY: Routledge.

Recommended reading:

Simanowski, Roberto. Facebook society: Losing ourselves in sharing ourselves. Columbia University Press, 2018.

Lupton, Deborah. The Quantified Self. John Wiley & Sons, 2016.

Humphreys, Lee. The Qualified Self: Social media and the accounting of everyday life. MIT press, 2018., ISBN ‎0262037858

Tifentale, Alise, Lev Manovich. 2014. Selfiecity: Exploring Photography and Self-Fashioning in

Social Media. Available at: https://manovich.net/index.php/projects/selfiecity-exploring.

23/4

Thresholds of photography

Hybrid media. Old and new. Slow and fast. Imperfect and perfect. Authentic and artificial. Human and non-human. Unbound. Undigital.

Required reading:

Magaudda, Paolo, and Sergio Minniti. 2019. “Retromedia-in-Practice: A Practice Theory Approach for Rethinking Old and New Media Technologies.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 25 (4): 673–93. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856519842805.

Recommended reading:

Henning, Michelle. 2018. Photography: The Unfettered Image. Directions in Cultural History. London, New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Koepnick, Lutz P. 2014. On Slowness: Toward an Aesthetic of the Contemporary. Columbia Themes in Philosophy, Social Criticism, and the Arts. New York: Columbia University Press.

Zylinska, Joanna. 2023. The Perception Machine: Our Photographic Future between the Eye and AI. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.

30/4

essay consultation

Learning outcomes

Learning outcomes: the student will gain knowledge of the history of photography, art and visual culture of the 20th century, learn to work with specialist literature, conduct research, analyse photographic images and present their knowledge in the form of a critical essay and interpretation.

Prerequisites and other requirements

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Literature

Literature:

See the list of references for each topic. The books and articles listed are available in the FAMU library or at https://tinyurl.com/3ec9jsth.

Evaluation methods and criteria

Assessment methods and criteria

The two main requirements for completing the course are:

• attendance (you cannot miss more than 2 classes; in serious cases announced in advance, you may compensate for missing more lectures by another - typically written - assignment: this needs to be consulted beforehand with the lecturer)
• turning in all required assignments (if you fail to submit only one of the presentations, your final grade is F):

1st written assignment: a critical analysis of a selected scholarly text (please consult the selected text with M. Šimůnek), 2-3 pages, deadline: 14 April 2025

2nd written assignment: final essay on a given topic, 5-10 pages, deadline: 31 May 2023

the exam will have the form of a discussion of both texts with the teacher

Both assignments in PDF format should be sent to simunek.michal@gmail.com. If you do not receive an email confirmation of their receipt, consider the texts unsubmitted.

The exam consists of a discussion of both assignments.

Note

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Schedule for winter semester 2024/2025:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

Schedule for summer semester 2024/2025:

• Week view
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The subject is a part of the following study plans

• Photography EN - Bachelor - 2022 (Required subjects)