• Offered for Year: 2024/25

• Module Leader(s): Dr Katarzyna Falecka

• Owning School: Arts & Cultures
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

• Capacity limit: 30 student places

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

Since its invention in the nineteenth century, photography has been the subject of contentious debates. Is photography an art? Is it – was it – a threat to art? Is photography something closer to a tool or technology? Is it media? This course will consider several key episodes in the histories of photography in relation to how the medium has been theorised and historicised by critics, scientists, photographers, and art historians. It will focus on photography’s relationship with theories of the modern and postmodern, exploring how photographic practices were both shaped by and contributed to discourses surrounding technology, gender, memory, mass culture, conflict, race, and class. Integral to this will be a consideration of how photography became absorbed by museums of modern and contemporary art, while also being capable of engaging in institutional critique. Through case studies drawn from histories of photography in Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the US, the course will encourage engagement with photography’s cultural, social, and political significance.

Outline Of Syllabus

The course will begin by examining the various ways in which photography’s invention has been historicised and consider whether it emerged, as many historians of the medium have argued, as a means to satisfy the public’s ‘frenzy for the visible’. Integral to these considerations will be photography’s role in the formation of imperial identities and colonial imaginaries. The course will then examine the various ways in which modernism asserted itself through photography. Questions of labour and the political will guide discussions on documentary photography, as well as on photography’s role in shaping a decolonial imagination. The course will also analyse photography’s postmodern iterations with a focus on questions of identity, mass culture, and authorship. Case studies will include the work of Augustus Washington, Paul Strand, Dora Maar, Tina Modotti, Malick Sidibé, Cindy Sherman, Santu Mofokeng, Lalla Essaydi, Glenn Ligon, Samuel Fosso, and Ilona Szwarc. Discussions of these works will be framed through writing by Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Susan Sontag, Edward Said, and others.

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Jointly Taught With

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

1. Lectures: to allow definition of the scope of the syllabus, an introduction to a body of knowledge, and modelling of the level and nature of the analysis required. PIP lectures will be supplemented with online material (in the form of pre-recorded lecture materials, relevant videos, etc.) to make the module content more accessible, manageable and digestible.

2. Seminars: to encourage interaction and the development of cognitive and key skills; to allow preparation and presentation of directed research on specific issues and case studies. Seminars help to foster collegiality among the cohort and are an important supplement to the teaching delivered by group discussions.

3. Canvas discussion groups: to allow for more innovative, interactive and cross-curricular teaching.

Nb. In person lectures and seminars can move to synchronous and asynchronous online delivery as required in response to pandemic-related restrictions.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Formative Assessments

Formative Assessment is an assessment which develops your skills in being assessed, allows for you to receive feedback, and prepares you for being assessed. However, it does not count to your final mark.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The essay affords the student the opportunity to conduct academic research into a topic of their choice relating to the module content, with the question(s) set by the module leader. The questions encourage students to engage closely with the key topics, critical ideas and practices studied on the module curriculum. The assessment will be supported by critical discussions undertaken during the seminars and/or discussion boards. The assignment is designed to develop critical thinking, the ability to develop an argument, writing skills, visual analysis and theoretical comprehension.

The Visual Analysis offers students the chance to hone writing and analytical skills in advance of the essay in a formative and less pressurised context. The formative nature of the assessment will permit faster feedback, allowing the case study analysis to feed fully into the summative essay.

Reading Lists

• FIN2038's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• FIN2038's Timetable