Storytelling and Photography

PUPH 4125 | Spring 2012 | Faculty: Vincent Cianni

Can a picture tell a story? What is the relationship of photography to cinema? How have the movies influenced contemporary photographic practice whether it is fine art, editorial or commercial? These are just some of the questions that will be addressed in this class. The class will give students an opportunity to create narrative-based pictures that are influenced by a variety of cinematic styles developed throughout the 20th Century. In addition to slide lectures, field trips, guest photographers, film screenings, readings and class assignments, the course will consider the visual styles developed by great directors such as Hitchcock and Antonioni and the more recent photographic work of Gregory Crewdson, Philip Lorca DiCorcia, Cindy Sherman, Sam Taylor Wood and William Eggelston. Students will draw on the technical skills they are learning in Freshman Seminar to create a final body of work that is stylistically informed by the variety of cinematic languages and narrative strategies examined in the course.Open to: PHO majors; non-majors with permission of the program