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Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
2009 Spring Semester - Course Description
Urban Social Photography
CEA Partner Institution: CEA GlobalCampus: Paris
Location: Paris, FrancePrimary Subject Area: Photography
Other Subject Area(s): Political Science, Sociology
Level(s): 300
UNH Course Code: PHT330
Instruction in: English
Recommended Semester Credits: 3
Contact Hours: 45
Fee: $150.00
- This course requires a $150 lab fee.
Prerequisites: None; Introduction to Photography recommended.
Required Supplies: This course is designed for digital photography and your camera must have a minimum of 4 mega pixels. Students are expected to provide their own additional supplies (approximately $150) from a supply list that the instructor will supply during the first day of class. You should not purchase any supplies before the first week of class.
Description
Can photography change the world? Many photographers have thought so in the past and many continue to believe so today precisely because photography and social criticism have been so intertwined for so long. Your objective in this course is therefore to develop an understanding of, and the practical ability to apply, the basic principles of technique and composition in the field of photography in a way that progressively transforms your eye and your camera into instruments of social commentary, criticism and change. At the same time, this course gives you an opportunity to record, in a personal and reflective way, the striking contrasts of the socially complex and fascinating urban cityscape that is Paris.
Exploring the history of social photography is your first task. With the invention of the camera, early practitioners quickly began focusing on the stark realities of mid 19th century life, thus paving the way for photojournalists and documentary photographers of today. This attraction to photography as a tool of social change continued in wartime with the horrifying images of trench warfare, the tragedy of the Spanish Civil War, the totality of the Second World War and the silence of the Holocaust. Alternatively, using the films and photographs shot by Leni Riefenstahl of a supposedly flawless Aryan race, Nazi propagandists successfully manipulated the masses in interwar Germany. Later Cold War photographs shot and edited to inform and manipulate public opinion were particularly notorious in a similar vein. And during the Vietnam years, the endless stream of uncensored photographs of the dead and wounded helped set the mood of the 1960?s revolution and were partially responsible for ending the war by raising public awareness of otherwise unseen injustices both at home and abroad. The photos coming out of Bagdad or the West Bank today are no less moving. And you find that the boundaries of how photography can be used to raise public awareness are continually shifting.
With this approach to photography in mind, you will develop and sharpen your basic photographic skills, becoming more practiced in the technical aspects of efficient camera use and more proficient in selecting the apparatus, lens, shutter speed, and lighting best adapted to your purpose. And towards more purely artistic, as well as social ambitions, you will learn to think about and control composition, mood, and subject when setting up and making pictures in the fast-changing and often highly charged setting and atmosphere of urban drama. To this end, you will investigate and participate in several grassroots projects where you will use photography as a tool for increasing popular awareness of the human tragedies behind poverty, homelessness, illegal immigration, child prostitution, and social discrimination, to mention just a few.
The continuous evolution of photography as a tool for social change and the many images that you capture here in the social complex of urban Paris, will be at the core of this course.
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