21G.049 | Spring 2017 | Undergraduate

French Photography

Assignments

Class Participation

Evaluated based on student’s attendance, the demonstration of adequate preparation, and the quality (not just quantity) of oral participation. Weekly Wiki Posts Students will, each week, upload either a photograph with explanatory caption (~50 words), a potential discussion question (~50 words), or short response to the week’s materials (~100 words) to the course Wiki. These are due by 7am every Monday (Wednesday if Monday class is canceled). Each week, as a class, we will discuss one or more questions/responses/photos. Individual responses will not be graded, but students must post each week to receive the full credit.

Presentations

Each student will give one 7–10 minute oral and visual presentation about a topic relevant to that week’s discussion. Students will sign up for presentations at the beginning of the semester. Presentations must present an argument about the material and will be graded on content, clarity, engagement with the topic, and oral communication skills. They will include a bibliography and end with a discussion question for the class.

Exhibition Reviews

Students will write a review (1,100 words) of the exhibition “Charlotte Moth: Seeing while Moving” The review should read like exhibition reviews published in newspapers and magazines. It will explain the show to a general audience with an interest in photography, and make an argument about the content and its quality.

Visual Analysis Papers

Students will submit 3 visual analysis papers (1,300 words each) over the course of the semester. These papers will use visual and formal analysis as well as context discussed in readings and in class to explore the meaning of one image or a pair of images. Students will have the option of writing about the materials presented in different weeks. These papers are due the Wednesday after we discuss the topic in class. More details about the Visual Analysis Papers.

Writing Advisor Meeting

Students must meet with Nora Jackson, our writing advisor to discuss a draft of their first visual analysis paper. If students do not meet with the writing advisor, their papers (even if submitted) will count as late until they do so.

Paper Revision and Expansion

Students will revise and expand one paper (1,500 words) by incorporating research about the photograph or ideas in their original paper based on feedback received from the instructor. Students must meet with me in order to discuss the revisions (Failure to do so will mean that submitted papers lose 3 full letter grades). Once they have received feedback on two papers, students are free to submit the revised paper at any time.

Additional Details

All written assignments must employ a standardized citation system (i.e., MLA, Chicago). Students must submit a list of resources consulted for their oral presentations.

Late assignments will lose one full letter grade for each day past the deadline. Assignments handed in a week late will automatically receive no credit. No extensions will be granted after an assignment’s due date has passed.

Week Presentation Topics / Sources
Week 3: Technologies

How to take a photograph circa 1880

How to take a photograph circa 1980

Is Digital Photography Photography?

Week 4: Capturing the World

Lumière Operators

Aerial Photography and WWI

Haffner, Jeanne. “From Enthusiasm to Expertise: Aerial Vision from Before the Airplane to the Aftermath of World War I.” In Buy at MIT Press The View from Above: The Science of Social Space. MIT Press, 2013. ISBN: 9780262018791.

Gettinger, Dan. “The Ultimate Way of Seeing: Aerial Photography in WWI.” Center for the study of the Drone at Bard College, January 28, 2014.

Taylor, Alan. “World War I in Photos: Aerial Warfare.” The Atlantic, April 27, 2014.

Satellite Photography

Gunthert, André. “Blue Marble: La terre vue de l’espace.” L’atelier des icônes, January 31, 2012.

Dorrian, Mark. “On Google Earth.” In Seeing from Above: The Aerial View in Visual Culture (2013). ISBN: 978-1780764610.

Metz, Cade. “Paired with AI and VR, Google Earth will Change the Planet.” Wired, June 29, 2015.

Week 5: Likeness & Identity

Disdéri and the Carte de Visite

McCauley, Anne. A.A.E. Disdéri & the Carte de Visite Portrait Photograph. Yale University Press, 1985. ISBN: 978-0300031690.

The Photomaton

Pellicer, Raynal. The Photobooth. Abrahms, 2011. ISBN: 978-0810996113.

Claude Cahun

Buy at MIT Press Cahun, Claude, Maya Deren, and Cindy Sherman. Inverted Odysseys. Shelley Rice, ed. MIT Press, 1999. ISBN: 9780262681063.

Don’t Kiss Me: The Art of Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Louise Downie, ed. Aperture / Tate, 2006. ISBN: 978-1597110259.

Week 6: Politics, Propaganda, and Protest

Photography and Nuit Debout [French]

Lennard, Natasha, and Nicholas Mirzoeff, “What Protests Look Like. The New York Times, March 2, 2017.

Rencontre: Francis Azevedo, photographe pour ‘Nuit debout.’” Inferno, May 24, 2016.

Blavignat, Yohan. “La photo iconique d’un CRS qui frappe une étudiante devient virale.” Le Figaro, April 15, 2016.

Photography and Black Lives Matter

Mirzoeff, Nicholas D. “#Blackliveslooking: How Ferguson Taught us not to Look Away.” The Conversation, August 10, 2015.

Mirzoeff, Nicholas D. “How the Jim Crow Internet is Pushing Back Against Black Lives Matter.” New Republic, September 26, 2016.

Cole, Teju. “On Photography: The Superhero Photographs of the Black Lives Matter Movement.” The New York Times Magazine, July 26, 2016.

McKnight, Matthew. “Black as We Wanna Be.” The Nation, October 10, 2016.

Sarkozy, the American [French]

Nicolas Sarkozy et les médias, l’amour haine.” France Inter, September 8, 2016.

Delporte, Christian. “Sarkozy and the Media.” Contemporary French and Francophone Studies 16, no. 3 (2012): 299–310.

Orth, Maureen. “Paris Match.” Vanity Fair, September 2008.

La Conquête. Directed by Xavier Durringer. Color, 105 min. 2011. [Optional]

Week 7: Urban Exploration (Street Photography)

Charles Marville

Kennel, Sarah.  Charles Marville: Photographer of Paris, Washington: National Gallery of Art.

Sramek, Peter. Piercing time: Paris after Marville and Atget: 1865–2012. Intellect Ltd. (1707), 2013. ISBN: 978-1783200320.

Germaine Krull

Buy at MIT Press Sichel, Kim. Germaine Krull: Photographer of Modernity. MIT Press, 1999. ISBN: 978-0262194013.

Krull, Germaine. 100 x Paris. Verlag der Reihe, 1929.

Robert Doisneau

Vestberg, Nina Lager. “Robert Doisneau and the Making of a Universal Cliché.” History of Photography 35, no. 2 (2011): 157–165.

“Robert Doisneau: Photographer Technique & Process.” C.N.P / La Sept / RIFF, 1989. [Watch on YouTube.]

Ollier, Brigitte. Doisneau Paris. Ginko Press, 1996. ISBN: 978-3927258341.

Week 8: Research and Investigation/Marking Art 

Etienne-Jules Marey

Braun, Marta. Picturing Time: The Work of Etienne-Jules Marey. University Of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN: 978-0226071756.

In the Institute Archives:

  • Marey, La Chronophotographie 1899
  • Marey, Le Mouvement 1894
  • Marey, La Photographie du mouvement 1892

How Photography Changed Painting (Impressionism)

McNamara, Carol, et al. The Lens of Impressionism: Photography and Painting Along the Normandy Coast, 1850–1874. Lucia Marquand, 2009. ISBN: 978-1555953256.

Easton, Elizabeth W. Snapshot: Painters and Photography, Bonnard to Vuillard. Yale University Press, 2011. ISBN: 978-0300172362.

Photographer, Model, Artist: Man Ray / Lee Miller.

Prodger, Phillip. Man Ray / Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism. Merrell Publishers, 2011. ISBN: 978-1858945576.

Week 9: Tourism & Travel

Postcards of Paris

Schor, Naomi. “Cartes Postales: Representing Paris 1900.” Critical Inquiry 18, no.2 (1992): 188–244.

See instructor for more references.

Street Vendors

See instructor for references.

Week 12: Making Art II (Institutions) 

Jaques-Henri Lartigue

Moore, Kevin. Jacques Henri Lartigue: The Invention of An Artist. Princeton University Press, 2004. ISBN: 978-0691120027.

Any of the several dozen other Lartigue books.

Week 14: Photography and Law

Eugène Appert’s Commune photographs

Fineman, Mia. Faking it: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2012. ISBN: 978-0300185010.

Przyblyski, Jeannene M. “Revolution at a Standstill: Photography and the Paris Commune of 1871.”  Yale French Studies 101 (2001): 54–78.

Week 15: Spreading the News II 

Robert Capa’s “The Falling Solider”

Follow the controversy about and history of this photo starting on the Lens blog.

Over the course of the semester, students are required to submit 3 visual analysis papers of 1,300 words each. Using visual and formal analysis as well as context discussed in readings and in class to explore the meaning of one or a pair of images. Students have the option of writing about the materials presented in different weeks, as detailed below.  

Week 1

Write about the following photograph:

Week 2

Write about the following photograph:

Week 3

Niépce Photos

Photo by Nicéphore Niépce, “View from the Window at Le Gras.” 1826 or 1827. Look at both copies of the photo - if you like, you may compare the two (even though they are technically the ‘same’ photo) in the image gallery below.

Week 4

In 1917, Fernand Cuville was employed by both the Photography section of the French army and the Archives of the Planet. Write about the autochrome by Cuville, “Children Playing Skittles, Place d’Erlon” found in the image gallery below. 

Week 5

Harcourt Photos

Compare the two photos:

Week 6

This photo was taken in August 2016. Released by Vantage News, no photographer named:

Week 7

Write about the following photograph:

Research & Investigation

Write about one of these two photographs (found in the gallery below), or compare them:

  • Doc Edgerton, high-speed photograph of a hummingbird, mid-twentieth century
  • Composite photo of a pelican in flight by Étienne-Jules Marey, c. 1880s

Week 8

Write about Henry Peach Robinson’s, “Fading Away” 1858, which is a composite photograph made from five negatives (see gallery below).    

Week 9

You may write about a photo from the Tourneboeuf exhibition, as long as you did not already write about the photo in depth in your exhibition review.

Week 10

Tourism and Travel

Write about one of the two postcard photographs in the gallery, or compare them. Think this week about function as well as meaning.

  • Postcard 1: The writing translates: “Algerian types. Moorish woman.” Handwritten: “I am sending you a package for pickup at the railway station. The babies are doing well; they have just walked by the beach. I shall write you shortly at greater length. Warm kisses to you all. [signed:] Martha.”
  • Postcard 2: Paris, Eiffel Tower. The handwriting translates: “September 15, 1904. In remembrance of the last day I was in Paris.” A young woman mailed it from Paris to her home address in Leipzig.

 

 

Course Info

Instructor
As Taught In
Spring 2017
Learning Resource Types
Written Assignments
Image Gallery