Module Content

Led by practising artist, EJ Major, this module looks closely at photography and film. We will explore how these practices relate to our activity as creators, consumers and critics. This course uses the two concepts of time and the index; as theoretical buoys, which we use to gauge where we are as we look at the narratives of both photography and film and consider particular historical and contemporary examples of each.

The course provides an in-depth examination of the nature of photography as a realist medium on the one hand and the photograph as a constructed space on the other. We begin with an exploration of the conventional understanding of the photograph as an index of the world and the history of the development of this understanding. We examine the conventional understanding of photographic realism and photography’s perceived objectivity/ truth-value. Against this backdrop we consider photography and its relation to time and how this has changed in the digital age i.e. the shift from the decisive moment of photographic film to the temporal ambiguity of a digitally retouched image.

In the second half of the course we consider performance in relation to photography and film practice. We review work begun in the 1970s that has been reinvigorated since the emergence of digital photography in which a number of leading artists have worked to unmask conventional cultural tropes and to simultaneously re-dress and re-utilise them to new effect. In particular these artists have brought narrative into photography, staging the index in a self-conscious use of performance. In so doing they have opened up the image as a space of becoming; allowing spectators to explore the meaning making function of photography, the why rather than the what, who or where of an image.

We also look at the impact of digital technology and image manipulation on the nature and meaning of photographic practice. Through the examination of both historical and contemporary work we will consider how artists have deconstructed received representations of gender and, at the same time, undermined traditional understandings and uses of photography and film.

This course will appeal to those who are fascinated by the media of photography and film and seek a deeper and broader understanding of their mechanisms alongside the strategies we employ and re-interpret, as creators, consumers and critics in understanding them.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course the student will have

A good grasp of the history of both film and photography.
	Developed their theoretical understanding in terms of how to look at photographs.
	Begun to master the skills of how, practically, to write about the creative arts, specifically in relation to film and photographic works.
	Considered performance in relation to photography and film practice.
	Begun to develop confidence in expressing their own, subjective response to cultural works, informed by their own research.
Delivery Method

One 2 hour lecture per week.