ARTH 3600 - The History of Photography

Traces the different directions photography has taken since its inception, using the social and cultural environment as a context and focus on the ever-increasing use of photography by artists in the creative process from the first uses of the camera obscura to the present. The specific reasons that set the stage for the "invention" of photography and how photography changed the role of the artists of the 19th- and 20th-centuries will be discussed. The lectures will cover documentary photography and the rise of photography as a separate art form. The course will also discuss photography's characteristics as an art form and how it has changed our perceptions of the world. In the 20th-century, photographs have become a discreet language of signs, symbols, and metaphors with implied narratives.