HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

The course is part of the optional courses of the Masters’ Degree in “History of Art and Preservation of the Artistic Heritage”. It aims at providing the students with an in-depth knowledge of a series of questions related to the history and theory of photography, with a special focus on the question of the aesthetic, epistemological, technical, and political implications of the distinction between sharp and blurred images, between images in high and images in low definition.

1. Knowledge and understanding:
The students will acquire an in-depth knosledge of a series of questions related to the history and theory of photography, with a special focus on the implications of the distinctions between sharp and blurred images, between images in high and images in low definition.
2. Capacity of applying knowledge and understanding:
The students will learn how to approach the history and theory of photography from the vantage point of research perspectives which have developed during the last 10-15 years, such as visual culture studies and media studies. The students will also learn how to discuss some of the issues that will be tackled during the course through the writing of a paper in English.
3. Capacity of formulating judgments:
The students will learn how develop original or partly original ideas concerning certain aspects of the history and theory of photography, with a special focus on the topic studied within the course.
4. Communicational skills:
The students will learn how to articulate their ideas in class, in English, within the framework of seminar-like discussions.
5. Learning skills:
The students will acquire the approriate conceptual and analytical skills that will allow them to analyze the issues debated in class. They will learn how to study and discuss texts in English, and how to write an academic paper in English with footnotes, bibliography, images, and captions.

No pre-requirements needed.

The course will study the history of photography from the 1920s up to nowadays, focusing on the analysis of the aesthetic, epistemological, technical, and political implications of the distinction between sharp and blurred images, between images in high and images in low definition. Even though the distinction between high and low definition becomes a key question in media theory only with Marshall McLuhan’s seminal Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1964)—a book in which the distinction between high and low definition is at the basis of the distinction between “hot” and “cold/cool” media—the question of the distinction between sharp images, full of details, and blurred images is already at the center of the theory of photography during the 1920s and 1930s. During this period, artists such as László Moholy-Nagy (in his Painting, Photography, Film, 1925, 1927) and cultural critics such as Siegfried Kracauer (in his essay “Photography”, 1927) and Walter Benjamin (in texts such as “News on Flowers”, 1928; “Little History of Photography”, 1931; “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility”, five versions 1935-36), reacting agains the tradition of Pictorialism, see in the sharp, detailed nature of the photographic image the possibility of developing a “new vision”, capable of unveiling an “optical unconscious” previously inaccessible, in order to inaugurate a new “visual culture” promoted by both photography and cinema. After having examinated the main coordinates of this debate—which during the 1920s and 1930s engages artists and photographers, theorists of photography and cinema, philosophers and cultural critics—the course will tackle the question of high and low definition, focusing onto two key periods: the 1960s, analyzing both McLuhan’s media theory and the production of a number of artists working on the threshold between photography and painting (Gerhard Richter, Sigmar Polke, Alain Jacquet), and the period going from the 1990s to nowadays, in which the history and the theory of photography face the impact of the question of the passage from the analog to the digital, and of the rise of new research fields such as media studies and visual culture studies.

For the students who are actually attending the course
At the end of the course, the students will write a paper in English of approximately 20.000 characters spaces included, with footnotes, bibliography, images, and captions.
In the paper the students will have to show an understanding of the issues discussed within the course, as well as a knowledge of the two texts indicated here below:
1. László Moholy-Nagy, Pittura Fotografia Film, nuova edizione italiana a cura di A. Somaini, Einaudi, Torino 2010; the English translation will be available in PDF: Painting Photography Film, MIT Press, Cambridge (Mass.), 1969.
2. Walter Benjamin, Aura e choc. Saggi sulla teoria dei media, a cura di A. Pinotti e A. Somaini, Einaudi, Torino 2012 (solo le seguenti parti: “Introduzione”, pp.IX-XXVIII; “Sezione I. L’opera d’arte nell’epoca della sua riproducibilità tecnica”, pp.5-76; Sezione IV. Fotografia e cinema”, pp.205-270). In alternative, in English: Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technical Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media, ed. by M. Jennings, B. Doherty, T.Y. Levin, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass.) 2008 (only the following sections: “Editors’ Introduction”, pp.1-8; “I. The Production, Reproduction, and Reception of the Work of Art”, pp. 9-18; “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility”, pp.19-55; “IV. Photography” and “V. Film”, pp.263-341)

For the students who will pass the exam without having attended the course
The students who will pass the exam without having attended the course will also have to write a paper in English of approximately 20.000 characters spaces included, with footnotes, bibliography, images, and captions.
In the paper the students will have to show an understanding of the issues discussed within the course, the knowledge of the two texts indicated above (points 1 and 2), and of one of the two texts indicated here below:
3a. Andrea Pinotti – Antonio Somaini, Cultura visuale. Immagini, sguardi, media, dispositivi, Einaudi, Torino 2016 (only chapters 1, 4 e 5)
3b. Francesco Casetti – Antonio Somaini (eds.), “Resolution”, special section of the Spring 2018 issue of NECSUS – European Journal of Media Studies (available online)

For any questions, the students will contact the professor at the email address that will be given at the beginning of the course.

The evaluation of the course work will be based on the paper of approximately 20.000 characters spaces included that each student will write in English, with footnotes, bibliography, images, and captions. At the beginning of the course the professor will present a list of possible topics. The paper will be sent to the professor by email, in pdf format, one week before the date of the exam. There will be no oral exams.

The course will adopt a seminar-like format. We encourage an active student participation in the discussion, in English, of the texts and the images that will be discussed during the course.

English

Written exam