Our study of the history of photography will reckon with technological innovations embedded in the medium. The always changing materiality of image cultures shape our experiences and understanding of photography. We will study photography from the mid-19th century to the present through the social and economic conditions that define the processes of making images with such devices as the camera obscura, to Kodak’s Brownie; analogue large format to Polaroid land cameras; 35mm point and shoots to camera phones; body cameras on police to the servers that store their data. Together we will investigate how photography, through these shifting modes of recording and distributing images, collaborates with other mediums and practices such as performance art, political organizing, and poetry.

2 credits.