NINETEENTH-CENTURY
PHOTOGRAPHY
Art History 382
(Course 01:082:382:01)
Index: 35165
Zimmerli Museum Multi-Purpose Room
Mon. and Wed. 1:10 - 2:30
Andrés Mario Zervigón, Assistant Professor of Art History
Office: Voorhees Hall, room 208
Office Phone: 732-932-0122, x22
Office hours: Mon., 2:40 – 4:00, and by appointment
email: zervigon@rci.rutgers.edu
The French author Roland Barthes described the emergence of
photography in the early nineteenth century as an "anthropological
revolution in man's history," a "truly unprecedented type of
consciousness." This lecture class aims to examine this proposition by
tracing the history of photographic ‘consciousness’ in the nineteenth
century as it develops within a number of specific arenas, from the
medium’s conception in the late 18th century through to debates in the
early 20th century about photography’s relationship to artistic and
social issues. The class’s structure will allow for individual sessions
to combine a formal, illustrated presentation with some detailed
discussion of particular photographers, images and texts. Taken as a
whole, the class will look at photography as a cultural phenomenon as
much as an art form, critically studying the various discursive arenas
that this new medium helped to foster and redefine.
Throughout the course we will also ask what makes photographic
images so compelling, what we expect to see in them and what, if
anything, distinguishes a photographic “document” from a
photographic artwork. By the course’s close, students should have
formed an opinion on these matters and should be able to support this
opinion with materials discussed throughout the semester. Most
importantly, we will have fun forming and sharing these judgments.
Ludwig Zehnder, X-Ray
photograph of a human
body, 1896.
Texts:
- All of the assigned readings are available on the course’s Sakai website.
The course lectures are arranged chronologically with a few classes
designated as case studies of specific problems in the history of
photography.
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Course Calendar:
Sep. 7, Wednesday: Introduction.
- Course overview and discussion of photography as subject of study.
Sep. 8, Thursday (Rutgers Monday): The Struggle to Capture the Image.
- Beaumont Newhall, The History of Photography (New York: Modern Museum of
Art, 1988), “The Elusive Image,” pp. 9-11. From hereon, this text will be referred to
as Newhall.
Sep. 12, Monday: The “Invention” of Photography.
- Newhall, “Invention,” pp. 13-25.
Sep. 14, Wednesday: Photography and the Heritage of Fine Arts.
- Peter Galassi, Before Photography. Painting and the Invention of Photography
(New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1981), pp. 11-31.
Sep. 19 Monday: The Daguerreotype. Case Study: The Daguerreotype in America.
- Merry Forresta, “Introduction: Secrets of the Dark Chamber. The Art of the
American Daguerreotype,” in Merry Forresta and John Wood, Secrets of the Dark
Chamber. The Art of the American Daguerreotype (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1995), pp. 14-30 with images and captions on following pages: 14,
38, 46-47, 52-53, 95, 102, 116, 117, 144, 179, 182-183, 242-245.
- Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, “Daguerreotype,” in Alan Trachtenberg, ed.,
Classic Essays on Photography (New Haven: Leete’s Island Press, 1980), pp. 1113.
Sep. 21, Wednesday: The Calotype.
- Roger Taylor, “The Formative Years: The Calotype in the 1840s,” Impressed by
Light. British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860 (New York:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007), pp. 12-29 and plates 1-12.
- William Henry Fox Talbot, “A brief Historical Sketch of the Invention of the Art,”
in Classic Essays on Photography, pp. 27-36.
Sep. 26, Monday: The Flourishing Calotype in France.
- Selections from Michel Frizot, “Automated Drawing: The Truthfulness of the
Calotype,” in Michel Frizot, ed., A New History of Photography (Köln: Könemann
Verlagsgesellschaft, 1994), p. 66 (“The Heliographic Mission”) and pp. 67-89.
From hereon, this book will be referred to as Frizot.
Sep. 28, Wednesday: Desdéri, the Carte de Visite, and the Photographic Portrait.
- “The Carte de Visite and the Search for Markets,” in Elizabeth Anne McCauley, A.
A. E. Disdéri and the Carte de Visit Portrait Photograph (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1985).
Oct. 3, Monday: Photography and Other People.
- Kathleen Stewart Howe, First Seen: Portraits of the World’s Peoples (London:
Third Millennium Publishing, 2004).
Oct. 5, Wednesday: The Photograph as Art.
- Newhall, “Art Photography,” pp. 73-83.
- Charles Baudelaire, “The Modern Public and Photography,” in Alan Trachtenberg,
ed., Classic Essays on Photography, pp. 83-89.
- Henry Peach Robinson. "Paradoxes of Art, Science, and Photography," originally
published in Wilson's Photographic Magazine. Vol. 29 (1892), no in Nathan Lyons,
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ed., Photographers on Photography. A Critical Anthology (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice Hall, 1966), pp. 242-245.
Oct. 10, Monday: Wednesday: Women, Photography and the New Artist, a Case Study:
Julia Margaret Cameron.
- Julia Margaret Cameron, “Annals of My Glass House,” in Photographs by Julia
Margaret Cameron, Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery, Scripps College. (Seattle,
University of Washington Press, 1996), pp. 10-16 and 31-39.
Oct. 12, Wednesday: Review for Midterm Exam
Oct. 17, Monday:
- MIDTERM EXAM.
Oct. 19, Wednesday: Vernacular Photography.
- Geoffrey Batchen, “Vernacular Photographies,” Each Wild Idea. Writing,
Photography, History (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001), pp. 56-80.
Oct. 24, Monday: Photography, History, Memory.
PAPER PROPOSALS DUE
- Hubertus von Amelnuxen, “The Century’s Memorial: Photography and the
Recording of History,” in Frizot, pp. 131-147.
Oct. 26, Wednesday: Photography and War.
- Selection from “Imaging of the Social World, in Mary Warner Marien,
Photography: A Cultural History (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2011), pp.
98-126.
Oct. 31, Monday: Photography and the American West.
- Martha A. Sandweiss, “The Narrative Tradition in Western Photography,” in
Sandweiss and Alan Trachtenberg, eds., Photography in Nineteenth-Century
America (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1991), pp. 99-129.
Nov. 2, Wednesday: Photography in 3 Dimensions.
- Pierre-Marc Richard, “Life in Three Dimensions: The Charms of Stereoscopy,” in
Frizot, pp. 175-183.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Stereoscope and the Stereograph,” in Vicki
Goldberg, ed., Photography in Print. Writings from 1816 to the Present
(Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1981), pp. 100-114.
Nov. 7, Monday: Photography and Its Origins (symposium).
- PAPER OUTLINE DUE
- Class to assemble at 2:30 pm in the Teleconference Room at the Alexander Library.
Nov. 9, Wednesday: The Conquest of Time: Early Chronophotography.
- Jean-Claude Guatrand, “Photography on the Spur of the Moment,” in Frizot, pp.
232-257.
Nov. 14, Monday: Chronophotography, a Case Study. Muybridge and The “Science” of
Dissected Movement.
- Marta Braun, “Marey, Muybridge, and Motion Pictures,” in Picturing Time: The
Work of Etienne-Jules Marey (1830-1904) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1992), pp. 228-262.
Nov. 16, Wednesday: Photography and the Invisible.
- Tom Gunning, “Invisible Words, Visible Media,” in Corey Keller, ed., Brought to
Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840-1900 (San Francisco: San Francisco
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Museum of Modern Art, 2009), pp. 50-63 and plates 1-3, 11, 16-17, 20-21, 59, 7694, 96-97, 102-109, 112-114, 141, 147-148, 156.
Nov. 21, Monday (Rutgers Wednesday): Early Documentary Photography, a Case Study:
Jacob Riis.
- Maren Stange, “From Sensation to Science: Documentary Photography at the Turn
of the Century,” in Symbols of Ideal Life: Social Documentary Photography in
America, 1890-1950 (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989),
pp. 1-46.
Nov. 23: NO CLASS
Thanksgiving Break for Wednesday classes.
Nov. 28, Monday: Photography, Type and Print.
- Neil Harris, "Iconography and Intellectual History: The Halftone Effect," in
Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites and Cultural Tastes in Modern America
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 304-317.
Nov. 30, Wednesday: Discussion on Polishing Your Term Paper.
BRING current draft of your paper to class.
Dec. 5, Monday: Kodak and the Democratization of Photography.
- Diane Waggoner, “Photographic Amusements, 1888-1919,” in Sarah Greenough,
ed., The Art of the American Snapshot, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2007), pp. 7-45 and plates 15, 16a-b, 17a-b, 18a-b, 19-20, 24-26, 31, 33, 36-37.
Dec. 7, Wednesday: The New Art Photography: Pictorialism.
PAPER DUE IN CLASS
- Selection from “The Great Divide,” in Marien, Photography: A Cultural History,
pp. 167-196.
Dec. 12, Monday: Review for Final Exam.
Dec. 21: Wednesday:
FINAL EXAM, 9:00 am., Zimmerli Museum Multi-Purpose Room
- Note that the final exam is not cumulative of the entire semester but only of the
course’s second half.
THE FINE PRINT
Attendance Policy: Students are expected to attend all classes; if you anticipate missing one or two classes, please use the
University absence reporting website https://sims.rutgers.edu/ssra/ to indicate the date and reason for your absence. An
email is automatically sent to me. I take attendance at the start of class. If you are not there when I call your name, you will
be marked absent. If you miss more than three classes, your final grade will be marked down one half grade for each
additional missed class. PLEASE NOTE: you have 3 excused absences to use as needed for emergencies, sickness, longer
holiday, etc. I DO NOT need to know why you have taken these absences and therefore, please do not tell me. But any
additional absences, NOT MATTER THE REASON will lower your grade. Therefore, I strongly recommend that you keep
you three excused absences in reserve just in case you get sick or face a family emergency. If for any reason you anticipate
missing more than three classes over the semester, you should withdraw from the course now.
If you are having trouble with the assignments for this class, see me as soon as possible.
Honor Policy: Plagiarism is a violation of judicial codes; it will be dealt with in accordance with university policy.
Please do not disrupt class by arriving late, leaving early, or allowing your cell phone to ring. If you are using your
computer, it should be for taking notes only. If I find you doing something unrelated to the class, such as messaging or
surfing the internet, I will ask you to leave the class.
There is no excuse other than a family emergency or an illness (with doctor's note) for missing exams or failing to turn in
your paper. Make a photocopy of your paper or keep a digital copy. Save your work often and print out a rough draft-computer, email, and server problems are not acceptable excuses for lost work.
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