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 what can be defined as “‘re-’ practices” – namely, the appropriation of already existing images and their new use, thereby recontextualisation, resignification and redistribution, especially in the digital domain.

1. Knowledge and understanding:
Students will acquire an in-depth knowledge of a series of questions related to the history and theory of photography, with a special focus on the practices of reappropriation, retouch and redistribution of images in the contemporary iconosphere.
2. Capacity of applying knowledge and understanding:
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 and media studies. Students will also learn how to discuss some of the issues that will be tackled during the course through the writing of a paper.
3. Capacity of formulating judgments:
Students will learn how to develop original or partly original ideas and how to elaborate a critical judgment concerning certain aspects of the history and theory of photography, with a special focus on the topics discussed during the course.
4. Communicational skills:
Within the framework of seminar-like discussions, students will learn how to articulate ideas with the appropriate language and share them with the professor and fellow students.
5. Learning skills:
Students will acquire the appropriate conceptual and analytical skills that will allow them to analyse the issues discussed in class. They will learn how to study and discuss written texts, in a constant confrontation with the professor and fellow students, as well as how to write an academic paper, accompanied by notes, bibliography, images and captions.

Good knowledge of the major historical events and the main movements of thought between the 19th and the 21st centuries, as a general framework in which the history of photography and of the visual arts is included.

The course will examine the history of photography focusing on the analysis of the aesthetic, epistemological, technical, and political implications of image production that takes place mostly through the appropriation of existing visual materials – a practice that has gained new impulse with Postmodernism. At the beginning of the last century, photography and cinema contributed to the renewal of art forms and to the hybridization of both disciplines and cultural fields. With the spread of the Internet and digital media, the possibilities of reproduction have expanded and simplified, further transforming, with an increasing speed, cultural practices and the way in which we relate to images. Today, appropriation and sharing are the two main features of (digital) photography, which, as an image that can be easily copied, manipulated and diffused in the form of a file, has become “fluid” – to such a degree that almost everyone has become a skilled producer, as well as a voracious consumer, of visual material. For artists and professional photographers, it is a new challenge, which involves, in addition to a constant updating of the procedures, tools and objectives of art, a close comparison with the technical and aesthetic evolutions, the social habits, and the political consequences brought by digital media. This profound revision process concerns a whole set of practices linked by the “re-” prefix, which act as counter-strategies in the current visual production. The “artists-iconographers” make extensive use of already existing images outside and inside the Net, modifying their form, meaning and context through remix, remediation, reenactment, recirculation, recodification, and rearchiviation. The value of “shared images”, which are bound to a perpetual migration, no longer concerns their origin – therefore also the idea of originality – but rather their destination and always different repetition/re-presentation.

For attending and non-attending students:

1. Charlotte Cotton, “The Photograph as Contemporary Art”, Thames & Hudson, London, 2004 (re-edited in 2009 and 2014).
2. Claudio Marra, “L’immagine infedele. La falsa rivoluzione della fotografia digitale”, Bruno Mondadori, Milan, 2006.
3. Five essays chosen from the following – collected in the folder “dispensa” on Moodle (to facilitate understanding, the essays will be examined and discussed during lessons):

• Cristina Baldacci, ‘Recirculation: The Wandering of Digital Images in Post-Internet Art’, in “Re-: An Errant Glossary”, a cura di C.F.E. Holzhey e A. Wedemeyer, Berlino, ICI Berlin, 2019, pp. 25-33.
• Cristina Baldacci, ‘Reenactment: Errant Images in Contemporary Art ’, in “Re-: An Errant Glossary”, a cura di C.F.E. Holzhey e A. Wedemeyer, Berlino, ICI Berlin, 2019, pp. 57-67.
• Benjamin H.D. Buchloh, ‘Allegorical Procedures: Appropriation and Montage in Contemporary Art’, in “Artforum”, 21, 1 (settembre 1982), pp. 43-56.
• Douglas Crimp, ‘The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism’, in “October”, vol. 15 (inverno, 1980), pp. 91-101.
• Douglas Crimp, ‘Pictures’ (1977), in “October”, vol. 8 (primavera 1979), pp. 75-88.
• Georges Didi-Huberman, ‘Rendere un’immagine’, in “aut aut”, 348 (ottobre-dicembre 2010), pp. 6-27 (disponibile su Moodle).
• Rosalind Krauss, ‘The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A Postmodernist Repetition’, in “October”, vol. 18 (autunno 1981), pp. 47-66.
• André Gunthert, ‘La cultura della condivisione o la rivincita delle masse’, in “L’immagine condivisa. La fotografia digitale”, trad. it. G. Boni, Contrasto, Roma 2016, pp. 97-112 (ed. or. 2015).
• Dieter Roelstraete, ‘Ri-fare: l’eterno ritorno dell’oggetto’, in “When Attitudes Become Form: Bern 1969/Venice 2013”, a cura di G. Celant, catalogo mostra, Fondazione Prada, Milano 2013, pp. 664-667.

NB: The complete programme will be presented and made available at the beginning of the course.

Non-attending students and those who skip more than 30% of the lessons will prepare, in addition to the programme indicated above, one of the following books of their choice:

• Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media”, ed. by M.W. Jennings, B. Doherty, T. Y. Levin, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (MA), 2008.
• Rosalind Krauss, “Le Photographique. Pour une théorie des écarts”, Macula, Paris, 1990.
• Nicholas Mirzoeff, “How to See the World”, Pelican Books, London, 2015.
• Andrea Pinotti, Antonio Somaini, “Cultura visuale. Immagini, sguardi, media, dispositivi”, Torino, Einaudi, 2016 (re-edited in 2020).

NB: It is advisable to contact the professor for specific requests or particular language needs about the bibliography for the exam.

Students will be evaluated through an oral exam – which will consist in questions about the topics studied on the books and essays of the bibliography, and (for attending students) about the issues discussed during classes – and a short paper. The paper topic must be related to the course and agreed in advance with the professor. It must correspond to approximately 20,000 characters (including spaces) and be accompanied by notes, bibliography, images and captions. The paper must be sent to the professor via email, in PDF format, at least ten days before the date of the exam chosen (papers that are up to 24 hours late will not be accepted; therefore, students will not be admitted to the exam). The grade obtained with the paper will average the one obtained in the oral exam.

NB: Papers will be carefully read and checked by the professor. The identification of obvious plagiarisms, with entire sentences or paragraphs copied from the Internet or from other sources, will cause the peremptory exclusion of the student from the oral exam.

oral

During lessons, students are expected to actively participate in the discussion, commenting the texts, images and topics presented in class. The interpretative reading of theoretical texts and of images will be carried out in class as methodological exercise to facilitate learning. The theoretical texts discussed by the professor, as well as the images that will be projected in class as slides, will be made available to students on the online platform Moodle during the course (for copyright reasons images and texts cannot be made available in any other way). Any possible visits to exhibitions and lectures by other professors or experts in the field will be an integral part of the course – further information will be provided during classes.

Italian

Class attendance is recommended to all students. Those who skip more than 30% of the lessons will be considered non-attending students and will have to add one of the books of the suggested bibliography in preparation of the exam.

Ca’ Foscari follows the Italian law (Law 17/1999; Law 170/2010) for the support and accommodation services available to students with disabilities or specific learning disabilities. If you have either a motor, visual, hearing or another disability (Law 17/1999), or a specific learning disorder (Law 170/2010) and you require support (classroom assistance, technological aids for carrying out exams or personalized exams, accessible format material, note retrieval, specialist tutoring as study support, interpreters or other), please contact the Disability and DSA office disita@unive.it.

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