Post-Photography: Images in the Digital Age

Level: Undergraduate, Graduate

Division: The New School for Public Engagement

School: School of Media Studies

Department: Media Studies

Course Number: NMDS 5109

Course Format: Lecture

Location: Online

Permission Required: No

Topics:

• Media Studies

Description:
Because ours is a predominantly visual culture in which photographs have become a common medium of representation and the means by which we receive most of our information about the world, issues regarding reality and truth in photography in the digital age are important subjects of continuing investigation. Although photography still constitutes one of the central media for the representation of experience, the legitimacy of photography has been challenged in a number of ways over the last fifteen or so years. Photography today is, in fact, faced with two apparent crises: one technological (the introduction of computerized images) and one epistemological (having to do with broader changes in ethics, knowledge and culture). This course will explore issues related to those crises such as the photograph as historical record, the photograph as representation, the realness of the digital photograph, traditional and digital manipulation of images, the relationship between postmodernism and post-photography, contemporary copyright debates, and the contemporary status of news and documentary photography. Students will be expected to complete a variety of theoretical, historical, and popular readings, participate in seminar discussions, and write a research paper.

Restrictions:

College

Open to New School Public Engagement students.

Level

Open to Graduate students.

Major

Open to Documentary Media Studies students.

Open to Environmental Studies students.

Open to Global Studies students.

Open to International Affairs students.

Open to Liberal Arts students.

Open to Media Studies students.

Open to Media Management students.

Open to Media Management students.