BMET 27A35 - Photography, Image and Power

This course examines photography as a cultural, political, and aesthetic practice, from its invention in the nineteenth century to the digital image today. Rather than treating photography as a neutral medium of documentation, it examines the different contexts in which photography operates as art, and asks how photographs produce meaning, authorize knowledge, shape memory, and exercise power. Who controls what is seen? How do museums, archives, media platforms, and the state determine what becomes visible and what does not? And how does meaning shift as images move between the gallery, the archive, and the networked flows of contemporary visual culture, losing and acquiring meaning at every point of transmission?

The course moves from the historical and institutional foundations of photography as an art form, through documentary practice and its ethical debates, large-scale gallery photography, staged and constructed photography, feminist practice and the politics of the gaze, postmodern appropriation, the archive, and the networked image. Alongside its European and American core, the course also considers photographic traditions outside the Euro-American context, and brings historical photographic debates into dialogue with the present.

No prior background in art history or visual studies is required. Students develop skills in visual analysis, critical reading, and written argument. Paris, with its exceptional concentration of photography institutions and exhibition culture, serves as a living resource throughout the semester.

Attendance and Participation (20%) Active engagement in seminar discussion. Students are expected to arrive having read the assigned text.

Midterm: In-Class Visual Analysis (50%) A timed, in-class written visual analysis based on images presented during the course. The assignment focuses on close looking, formal and contextual analysis, and interpretation of how meaning is produced through photographic means. Further guidelines will be provided in class.

Final Research Paper (30%) A research paper of 2,500-3000 words that develops a focused argument related to themes explored in the course. Topics may focus on a photographer, a photographic movement, an exhibition, an institutional context, or a theoretical issue related to photography and visual culture. All topics must be approved in advance. Detailed guidelines and deadlines will be provided during the semester.