11.309J | Fall 2003 | Graduate

Sites in Sight: Photography as Inquiry

Readings

Required Reading

One text is required:

Spirn, Anne Whiston. The Language of Landscape. Yale, 1998.

Required readings are on reserve in the Rotch Library.

Session #1: Reading and Telling Landscape

Required:

Spirn. Language of Landscape. Pp. 3-81.

Meyerowitz, Joel. “Nature of Cities.”

Further Readings:

Meinig, D. W., ed. The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes. Oxford, 1979.

Potteiger, Matthew, and Jamie Purinton. Landscape Narratives. Wiley, 1998.

Watts, May. Reading the Landscape of America. Collier, 1975.

Cronon, William. “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative.” Journal of American History 78, no. 4 (March 1992).

Elkins, James. How to Use Your Eyes. Routledge, 2000.

Cosgrove, Denis, and Stephen Daniels, eds. The Iconography of Landscape. Cambridge, 1988.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. Topophilia. Prentice-Hall, 1974.

-–. Space and Place. Minnesota, 1977.

Clay, Grady. Close Up: How to Read the American City. Chicago, 1973.

Berger, John, and Jean Mohr. Another Way of Telling. Pantheon, 1982.

Collier, John, Jr., and Malcolm Collier. Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method. New Mexico, 1986.

Lange, Dorothea. American Country Woman. Amon Carter Museum, 1967.

Lange, Dorothea, and Paul S. Taylor. American Exodus. Yale, 1969.

Adams, Robert. Beauty in Photography. Aperture, 1981.

Session #3: Light I

Required:

Rowell, Galen. Mountain Light. Sierra Club, 1986, pp. 4-9, 38-43, 58-67, 73-94.

Meyerowitz, Joel, and PDN Legends Online: Joel Meyerowitz and the exhibit section of Joel Meyerowitz: Images from Ground Zero.

Further Readings:

Lynch, David K., and William Livingston. Color and Light in Nature. Cambridge, 1995.

Minnaert, M. G. J. Light and Color in the Outdoors. Springer-Verlag, 1974.

Rossing, Thomas, and Christopher Chiaverina. Light Science: Physics and the Visual Arts. Springer, 1999.

Swirnoff, Lois. Color of Cities. McGraw-Hill, 2000.

Freeman, Michael. Light. Amphoto, 1988.

Meyerowitz, Joel. Cape Light. Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1985.

-–. St. Louis and the Arch. Little, Brown, 1980.

Misrach, Richard. The Sky Book. Arena, 2000.

White, Minor. Light 7: Photographs from an Exhibition on a Theme. MIT, 1968.

Adcock, Craig. James Turrell: The Art of Light and Space. California, 1990.

Session #4: Light II

Required:

Rowell, Galen. Mountain Light. Sierra Club, 1986, pp. 182-219.

Callahan, Harry. New Color: Photographs 1978-1987. Hallmark, 1988.

Further Readings:

Albers, Josef. Interaction of Color. Yale, 1963.

Itten, Johannes. The Elements of Color. Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970.

Gage, John. Color and Culture. California, 1993.

-–. Color and Meaning: Art, Science, and Symbolism. California, 1999.

Lynch, David K., and William Livingston. Color and Light in Nature. Cambridge, 1995.

Minnaert, M. G. J. Light and Color in the Outdoors. Springer-Verlag, 1974.

Swirnoff, Lois. Color of Cities. McGraw-Hill, 2000.

Meyerowitz, Joel. Cape Light. Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1985.

-–. St. Louis and the Arch. Little, Brown, 1980.

Adcock, Craig. James Turrell: The Art of Light and Space. California, 1990.

Session #6: Elements of Landscape Language

Required:

Spirn, Language of Landscape. Pp. 85-132.

Lange, Dorothea, and Paul S. Taylor. American Exodus. Yale, 1969.

Caponigro, Paul. Landscape. McGraw Hill, 1975.

Further Readings:

Appleton, Jay. The Experience of Landscape. Wiley, 1975.

Arnheim, Rudolf. “Order and Complexity in Landscape Design.” In Toward a Psychology of Art. California, 1966.

-–. Visual Thinking. California, 1969.

Alexander, Christopher, et al. A Pattern Language. Oxford, 1977.

Lynch, Kevin. Image of the City. MIT, 1960.

Westerbeck, Colin, and Joel Meyerowitz. Bystander: A History of Street Photography. Bullfinch, 1994.

Caponigro, Paul. Landscape. New York: McGraw Hill, 1975.

Vanderbilt, Paul. Between the Landscape and Its Other. Johns Hopkins, 1993.

-–. Wise Silence. Little, Brown, 1983.

Fuchs, R. H. Richard Long. Thames and Hudson, 1986.

Smithson, Robert. Photo Works. New Mexico, 1993.

Goldsworthy, Andy. A Collaboration with Nature. Abrams, 1990.

Caponigro, John Paul. Adobe® Photoshop® Masterclass. Peachpit, 2000.

Blatner, David, and Bruce Fraser. Real World Photoshop® 5. Peachpit, 1999.

Session #7: Significant Detail

Required:

Szarkowski, John. Atget. Museum of Modern Art, 2000.

John Jr. and Malcolm Collier. Visual Anthropology. New Mexico, 1986, pp. 29-42.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. Saudades do Brasil: A Photographic Memoir. Washington, 1995.

Further Readings:

Szarkowski, John. Looking at Photographs. Museum of Modern Art, 1973.

Clay, Grady. Close Up: How to Read the American City. Chicago, 1973.

Thomas, Ann, ed. Beauty of Another Order: Photography in Science. Yale, 1997.

Lange, Dorothea, and Paul S. Taylor. American Exodus. Yale, 1969.

Welty, Eudora. One Time One Place: Mississippi in the Depression. Mississippi, 1996.

Agee, James, and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Houghton-Mifflin, 1941.

Vanderbilt, Paul. Between the Landscape and Its Other. Johns Hopkins, 1993.

Cartier-Bresson, Henri. City and Landscapes. Bullfinch, 2001.

-–. The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photographs and Photographers. Aperture, 1999.

Adams, Ansel. Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs. Little, Brown, 1983.

Meyerowitz, Joel. La natura delle città. Motta Editore, 1994.

-–. Paul Strand. Aperture, 1971.

Session #8: The Context of Place

Required:

Spirn. Language of Landscape. Pp. 133-188.

Tice, George. Paterson. Rutgers, 1972.

Further Readings:

Heaney, Seamus. “The Sense of Place.” In Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1980.

Hoskins, W. G. The Making of the English Landscape. Penguin, 1970.

Lynch, Kevin. What Time Is This Place?. MIT, 1972.

Philip, and Phylis Morrison, and the Office of Charles and Ray Eames. Powers of Ten. Scientific American, 1982.

Berger, John, and Jean Mohr. Another Way of Telling. Pantheon, 1982.

Corner, James, Alex S. MacLean. Taking Measures Across the American Landscape. Yale, 1996.

Ward, Alan. American Designed Landscapes. Spacemaker, 1998.

Meyerowitz, Joel. St. Louis and the Arch. Little, Brown, 1985.

Caponigro, Paul. Paul Caponigro. Aperture, 1967.

-–. Landscape. McGraw Hill, 1975.

Morris, Wright. The Inhabitants. Scribner’s, 1946.

Adams, Robert. From the Missouri West. Aperture, 1980.

Evans, Terry. Prairie: Images of Ground and Sky. Kansas, 1986.

Jackson, J. B. The Essential Landscape: The New Mexico Photographic Survey. New Mexico, 1985.

Klett, Mark. Revealing Territory: Photographs of the Southwest. New Mexico, 1992.

Viewing Olmsted: Photographs by Robert Burley, Lee Friedlander, and Geoffrey James. MIT, 1996.

Trager, Philip. Villas of Palladio. Text by Vincent Scully. Little, Brown, 1986.

Kenna, Michael. Le Notre’s Gardens. Ram, 1997.

Siskind, Aaron. Harlem Photographs 1932-1940. Smithsonian, 1990.

Vergara, Camilo Jose. The New American Ghetto. Rutgers, 1995.

Balmori, Diana, and Margaret Morton. Transitory Gardens. Uprooted Lives. Yale, 1993.

Hood, Walter. Urban Diaries. Spacemaker, 1997.

Session #10: Landscapes Poetics

Required:

Spirn, Language of Landscape. Pp. 216-239.

Heaney, Seamus. “The Sense of Place.” In Preoccupations. Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1980, pp. 131-149.

Caponigro, Paul. Landscape. McGraw Hill, 1975.

Further Readings:

Dewey, John. Art as Experience. Capricorn, 1958.

Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago, 1980.

Bourassa, Steven. Aesthetics of Landscape. Belhaven, 1991.

Fowles, John, and Frank Horvath. The Tree. Little, Brown, 1979.

Bye, A. E. Art into Landscape, Landscape into Art. PDA, 1983.

Vanderbilt, Paul. Between the Landscape and Its Other. Johns Hopkins, 1993.

Jussim, Estelle, and Elizabeth Lindquist-Cock. Landscape as Photograph. Yale, 1985.

Szarkowski, John. Looking at Photographs. Museum of Modern Art, 1973.

White, Minor. Mirrors Messages Manifestation. Aperture, 1969.

Session #11: Images and Words

Required:

Lange, Dorothea. American Country Woman. Amon Carter Museum, 1967.

Vergara, Camilo Jose. American Ruins. Monacelli, 1999.

Morris, Wright. The Inhabitants. Scribner’s, 1946.

Further Readings:

Berger, John, and Jean Mohr. Another Way of Telling. Pantheon, 1982.

Welty, Eudora. One Time One Place: Mississippi in the Depression. Mississippi, 1996.

Morris, Wright. Time Pieces: Photographs, Writing, and Memory. Aperture, 1989.

Caponigro, Paul. Landscape. McGraw Hill, 1975.

Sommer, Frederick. Words and Images. Center for Creative Photography, 1984.

Fowles, John, and Frank Horvath. The Tree. Little, Brown, 1979.

Agee, James, and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Houghton-Mifflin, 1941.

Session #13: Landscape Narratives

Required:

Spirn, Language of Landscape. Pp. 240-265.

Ando, Tadao, and Richard Pare. The Colours of Light. Phaidon, 1996.

Lange, Dorothea, and Paul S Taylor. American Exodus. (Compare two editions: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939 and Yale, 1969.)

Further Readings:

Philip, and Phylis Morrison, and the Office of Charles and Ray Eames. Powers of Ten. Scientific American, 1982.

Potteiger, Matthew, and Purinton, Jamie. Landscape Narratives. Wiley, 1998.

Hayden, Dolores. The Power of Place: Urban Landscape as Public History. MIT, 1995.

Watts, May. Reading the Landscape of America. Collier, 1975.

Lange, Dorothea. American Country Woman. Amon Carter Museum, 1967.

Cronon, William. “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative.” Journal of American History 78, no. 4 (March 1992).

Vanderbilt, Paul. Between the Landscape and Its Other. Johns Hopkins, 1993.

Morris, Wright. Time Pieces: Photographs, Writing, and Memory. Aperture, 1989.

Smith, Kevin. Structure of the Visual Book. Visual Studies Workshop, 1984.

White, Minor. Mirrors Messages Manifestation. Aperture, 1969.

Lyons, Nathan. Notations in Passing. MIT, 1974.

This list of books and essays provides a mere glimpse into an enormous literature on photography and the landscape of place. You should browse through these and augment them with your own list of readings and photographers.

Adams, Ansel. Examples: The Making of 40 Photographs. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983.

-–. Ansel Adams in Color. Edited by Harry Callahan. Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1993.

Adams, Robert. From the Missouri West. New York: Aperture, 1980.

-–. Beauty in Photography. Millerton, NY: Aperture, 1981.

-–. Notes for Friends. University Press of Colorado, 1999.

Adcock, Craig. James Turrell: The Art of Light and Space. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990.

Agee, James, and Walker Evans. Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1941.

Alexander, Christopher, Sara Ishikawa, and Murray Silverstein. A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977.

Appleton, Jay. The Experience of Landscape. London: John Wiley and Sons, 1975.

Arnheim, Rudolf. “Order and Complexity in Landscape Design.” In Toward a Psychology of Art. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1966, pp. 123-35.

-–. Visual Thinking. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1969.

Balmori, Diana, and Morton Margaret. Transitory Gardens, Uprooted Lives. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. New York: Hill and Wang, 1975.

Beahan, Virginia, and McPhee, Laura. No Ordinary Land: Encounters in a Changing Landscape. New York: Aperture, 1998.

Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin Books, 1977.

-–. About Looking. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980.

-–. Sense of Sight. New York: Random House, 1985.

Berger, John, and Mohr, Jean. Another Way of Telling. New York: Pantheon, 1982.

Blatner, David, and Bruce Fraser. Real World Photoshop® 5. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press, 1999.

Bourassa, Steven C. The Aesthetics of Landscape. London: Belhaven Press, 1991.

Brown, Julia, ed. Occluded Front: James Turrell. Larkspur Landing, CA: Lapis Press, 1985.

Bye, A. E. Art into Landscape; Landscape into Art. Mesa, AZ: PDA Publishers, 1983.

Greenough, Sarah. Harry Callahan. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 1996.

Caponigro, Paul. Paul Caponigro. New York: Aperture, 1967.

-–. Landscape. New York: McGraw Hill, 1975.

-–. Meditations in Light. Morris Press.

Caponigro, John Paul. Adobe® Photoshop® Masterclass. San Francisco: Peachpit Press, 2000.

Cartier-Bresson, Henri. The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photographs and Photographers. New York: Aperture, 1999.

-–. City and Landscapes. Bullfinch Press, 2001.

Clark, Kenneth. Landscape into Art. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.

Clay, Grady. Close Up: How to Read the American City. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1973.

Collier, John Jr., and Malcolm Collier. Visual Anthropology: Photography as a Research Method. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1986.

Corner, James, and Alex S. MacLean. Taking Measures Across the American Landscape. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996.

Cosgrove, Denis and Stephen Daniels, eds. The Iconography of Landscape. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.

Cronon, William. “A Place for Stories: Nature, History, and Narrative.” Journal of American History 78, no. 4 (March 1992).

Evans, Terry. Prairie: Images of Ground and Sky. Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1986.

Evans, Walker. American Photographs. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1938.

Fowles, John, and Frank Horvath. The Tree. Boston: Little and Brown, 1979.

Freeman, Michael. Light. Amphoto Photography Workshop Series_._ New York: Amphoto, 1988.

Fuchs, R. H. Richard Long. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1986.

Gerster, Georg. Below from Above. New York: Abbeville, 1986.

Goldsworthy, Andy. A Collaboration with Nature. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1990.

Hayden, Dolores. The Power of Place: Urban Landscape as Public History. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995.

Haynes, Barry, and Wendy Crumpler. Photoshop® 5 Artistry. Indianapolis: New Riders, 1998.

Heaney, Seamus. “The Sense of Place.” In Preoccupations: Selected Prose 1968-1978. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1980.

Hockney, David. Hockney on Photography. New York: Harmony Books, 1988.

Hood, Walter. Urban Diaries. Washington D.C.: Spacemaker Press, 1997.

Hoskins, W. G. The Making of the English Landscape. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1970.

Jackson, John Brinckerhoff. The Essential Landscape: The New Mexico Photographic Survey. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1985.

-–. Discovering the Vernacular Landscape. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984.

-–. A Sense of Place, A Sense of Time. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.

-–. Landscape in Sight: Looking at America. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.

Jussim, Estelle, and Elizabeth Lindquist-Cock. Landscape as Photograph. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985.

Kepes, Gyorgy. Language of Vision. Chicago, IL: Paul Theobald, 1944.

Klett, Mark. Revealing Territory: Photographs of the Southwest. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992.

Lange, Dorothea. Dorothea Lange Looks at the American Country Woman. Fort Worth, TX: Amon Carter Museum, 1967.

Lange, Dorothea, and Paul S. Taylor. American Exodus. New York: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939.

-–. American Exodus. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969.

Levi-Strauss, Claude. Saudades do Brasil: A Photographic Memoir. University of Washington Press, 1995.

Lynch, David K., and William Livingston. Color and Light in Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Lynch, Kevin. Image of the City. Boston, MA: MIT Press, 1960.

-–. What Time Is This Place? Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1972.

Lyons, Nathan. Notations in Passing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974.

Margulis, Dan. Professional Photoshop® 5. New York: John Wiley, 1998.

Maynard, Patrick. Thinking through Photography. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997.

Meinig, D. W., ed. The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

Meyerowitz, Joel. Cape Light. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1985.

-–. St. Louis and the Arch. Boston: Little, Brown (New York Graphic Society), 1980.

-–. La natura delle città. Motta Editore, 1994.

Minnaert, M. G. J. Light and Color in the Outdoors. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1974.

Misrach, Richard. The Sky Book. Santa Fe, NM: Arena, 2000.

Mitchell, William J. The Reconfigured Eye: Visual Truth in the Post-Photographic Era. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992.

Morris, Wright. Time Pieces: Photographs, Writing, and Memory. New York: Aperture, 1989.

-–. The Inhabitants. New York: Scribner’s, 1946.

Morrison, Philip, Morrison, Phylis, and the Office of Charles and Ray Eames. Powers of Ten. New York: Scientific American Books, 1982.

Paul Strand: A Retrospective Monograph. New York: Aperture, 1971.

Pfahl, John. A Distanced Land. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990.

Potteiger, Matthew and Jamie Purinton. Landscape Narratives: Design Practices for Telling Stories. New York: John Wiley, 1998.

Rowell, Galen. Mountain Light. Sierra Club, 1986.

Siskind, Aaron. Harlem Photographs 1932-1940. Introduction by Gordon Parks_._ Washington D.C.: Smithsonian, 1990.

Smith, Kevin. Structure of the Visual Book. Rochester, NY: Visual Studies Workshop, 1984.

Smithson, Robert. Photo Works. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1993.

Swirnoff, Lois. The Color of Cities. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.

Szarkowski, John. Looking at Photographs. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1973.

-–. American Landscapes. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1981.

-–. Atget. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2000.

Thomas, Ann, ed. Beauty of Another Order: Photography in Science. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997.

Tice, George. Paterson. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1972.

Trager, Philip. Changing Paris. Arena, 2000.

Tuan, Yi-Fu. Topophilia. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1974.

-–. Space and Place. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1977.

Vanderbilt, Paul. Between the Landscape and Its Other. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1993.

Vergara, Camilo Jose. The New American Ghetto. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1995.

Vergara, Camilo Jose. American Ruins. New York: Monacelli Press, 1999.

Viewing Olmsted: Photographs by Robert Burley, Lee Friedlander, and Geoffrey James. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996.

Ward, Alan. American Designed Landscapes. Washington D.C.: Spacemaker Press, 1998.

Welty, Eudora. One Time One Place : Mississippi in the Depression. University Press of Mississippi, 1996 (Reprint).

White, Minor. Mirrors Messages Manifestation. New York: Aperture, 1969.

White, Minor. Light 7: Photographs from an Exhibition on a Theme. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968.

Course Info

As Taught In
Fall 2003
Level
Learning Resource Types
Media Assignments with Examples
Written Assignments