Photographic-Eye
Seminar - UHON 301

Instructor(s): Megan Jacobs

Course Description

This course will explore the role that photography has played in shaping and preserving culture historically and in contemporary times through an investigation of vernacular and fine art photographs. This inquiry will provide the backdrop for students to use photography as a creative tool through an array of photographic camera techniques and editing approaches. How does the act of deliberately making images help one to think in new ways? We’ll investigate how the materiality of an image or method of presentation informs the meaning of a creative work. Creatively we’ll explore this by printing on a host of substrates such as fabric, bamboo, and rice papers. 

 

For an individual living in the 1840’s one may have only possessed a few photographic images in their lifetime, yet now we can snap 20 images in a few seconds alone. The desire to take photographs has persisted over the last 180 years but the meaning of these very images has shifted. We’ll investigate this transformation through an evaluation of the breadth of the contemporary photographs that we are exposed to—ranging from selfies, to surveillance imagery, to “snapshot” aesthetic ads—in and effort to contextualize how they inform contemporary photographic artists.

Texts

We will read excerpts from the following texts, in the form of an online reader,  in addition to supplemental materials: 

  • Barrett, Terry. Crits: A Student Manual, Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018.  
  • Heiferman, Marvin. Photography Changes Everything. New York: Aperture, 2012
  • Cotton, Charlotte. Photography is Magic. New York: Aperture, 2015. 
  • Cotton, Charlotte. Public, Private, Secret: On Photography and the Configuration of Self, Aperture, 2018.
  • Mirzoeff, Nicholas. How to See the World: An Introduction to Images, from Self-Portraits to Selfies, Maps to Movies and More. New York, Basic Books, 2016.
  • Pultz, John. The Body and the Lens: Photography 1839 to the Present, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1995.
  • Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1973.

Requirements

This course will provide several opportunities to explore students' creative processes through a range of projects and introductory creative exercises. These efforts will culminate in an final photographic body of work. 

Attendance/Discussion Participation.................................................................100 points

Oral Group Presentation on a Photographer ....................................................200 points

Creative Exercises + Written Observations (8 worth 25 points each)................200 points

Creative Project #1............................................................................................150 points

Creative Project #2............................................................................................150 points        

Final Photographic Project….............................................................................200 points 

About the Instructor(s): Megan Jacobs

Megan Jacobs (she/her) is an Associate Professor in the Honors College. Megan’s interdisciplinary honors courses range from a philosophical exploration of the good life, to evaluating art’s role as a socio-political tool, to exploring identity through photography. Broadly, her courses help students to hone their critical thinking skills in order to creatively construct their way in the world. Her teaching interests include fine art (photography, installation art, ecoArt), design (design thinking, data visualization, exhibit design), philosophy (aesthetics, material culture studies) and fashion. Jacobs earned a BA in Fine Art from Smith College and an MFA from the University of New Mexico. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has been part of exhibitions at Aperture Gallery, Saatchi Gallery, the Museum of New Art (MONA), The FENCE, Blue Sky Gallery, and Currents New Media Festival. Her work has been featured in Musée Magazine, Lenscratch, Feature Shoot, and Frankie Magazine.