This course will consider selected moments in the history of American documentary photography, beginning with social documentary at the turn of the twentieth century through expanded documentary in the twenty-first century. Probing the American tradition of truth-telling, we will track the shifting artistic debates surrounding the relationship of photographic representation to social justice. How did specific projects shape the collective imagination about the American mythos of liberty, equality, and justice for all? How did alternative approaches generate different images of American democracy, its citizens and its outsiders? Finally, how have recent documentary-based practices reproduced the historical as contemporary? We will look at Lewis Hine and the Photo League (the Feature Group’s Harlem Document); the Farm Security Administration, Toyo Miyatake’s and Dorothea Lange’s censored photographs; Robert Frank’s The Americans and Roy DeCarava’s The Sweet Flypaper of Life; Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand, and Gordon Parks; and finally Sally Mann, Carrie Mae Weems, An-My Lê, LaToya Ruby Frazier, and Dawoud Bey.

2 credits.