Syllabus (general idea, things will change)

History of Photography - Pratt Manhattan - Saturdays 1pm – 4pm
Maxim Ryazansky – MaxTakesPhotos@yahoo.com

http://www.photohistorybymax.blogspot.com- classes are subject to change. Please continuously check the blog for updates and readings and if we will be meeting at a gallery or having an artist lecture.


week 1 – 10/11/08 – Introduction to class. We will be discussing such topics as: What is photography? Why is it important? What are it’s origins? How do we critique it? Pinhole cameras & camera obscuras. Discussing an excerpt from Charles Baudelaire’s “on photography” from the Salon of 1859. Niepce, Ibn al-Haytham, and other important figures in the origins of photography.

week 2 – 10/18/08 – Early permanent images. Henry Fox Talbot & permanent negatives, Lousi Daguerre and silver plated copper developed with mercury, wet plate collodians & ambrotypes. Origins of color photography by James Clerk-Maxwell. Portrait photography.

week 3 – 10/25/08 - Mathew Brady covers the American civil war. How did photography change the way things were documented, the news, public opinion. We will also look into more current war photography and discuss other photographers such as Larry Burrows, Nick Utt, Eddie Adams. Will be watching a documentary called “war photographer”

week 4 – 11/01/08 - Artist lecture by Stephanie Lyn Slate. Stephanie works primarily with Platinum prints and liquid emulsion to print on bones. She will be talking about her process and it’s relevancy to photo history.

week 5 – 11/08/08 – Beginnings of dry plate photography. Eadward Muybridge settles bet "do a horse's four hooves ever leave the ground at once" Beginnings of half tone photography (used for newspapers) Kodak makes cameras with rolls of paper and later film. Jacob Riis publishes “how the other half lives, ” Lewis Hine photographs children’s work conditions. Discuss the humanitarianism of photograsphy.

week 6 – 11/15/08 – High quality black and white and commercial color film become readily available to the public. Man Ray develops “rayographs” Beginnings of Nikon and Leica. Visit the Leica Gallery 670 Broadway / Suite 500.

week 7 – 11/22/08 – development of strobe photography, the f/64 group is founded, Farm security administration. Magnum photo agency is started

week 8 - 11/29/08 & 9 12/6/08 –– General look at photography since the 1950s: Gary Winnogrand, William Wegman Edward Steichen, Cartier Bresson, Robert Capa, Bruce Davidson, Elliot Erwitt, Bruce Gilden, Susan Meiselas, Cindy Sherman, Bill Owens, Larry Clark, Eli Reed, Alex Webb, etc. etc. You should be bringing in short lists of artists you specifically want to talk about.

week 10 – 12/13/08 – The internet / digital cameras and how they are changing photography. We will not only discuss the importance of these tool but also look at work online and with your new found knowledge of the medium you will show me websites by current artists and talk about them within the context of the history of photography.