40133 - AFPG - Lab-based Course on Photography I

Learning outcomes

At the end of this course students will have learned and critically engaged with fundamental creative, theoretical and conceptual foundations of artistic photographic practice - including composition, visual languages and culture, photographic histories and vocabularies, and personal creative expression - in relation to landscape, architecture, physical sensation and environment.

Course contents

Aaron Schuman: Creative and Experimental Photography – Photography & The Senses

A Workshop-Based Photography Course with Aaron Schuman.

Readings/Bibliography

To be confirmed.

Teaching methods

In this course students will collectively explore the relationship between photography and the senses – sight, touch, smell, taste, hearing, balance (vestibular) and body-awareness (proprioception).

Photographer Walker Evans once wrote:

“The photographer is a joyous sensualist,
for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts...
The matter of art in photography may come down to this:
it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing;
it is the defining of observation full and felt."
- Walker Evans, Photography (1969)

The aim of this course is to encourage students to intimately explore and connect with their experience of environment through the creative processes of photography, and to carefully consider how the photographic medium can be used to capture, interpret, understand and project one’s own physical experiences of the surrounding world in moving and meaningful ways. Can we make photographs that not only communicate what we see, but also what we hear, smell, taste, and feel? Can a photograph engage with balance and imbalance, or in some way convey the intensity of our physical sensations? How can we create images that are genuinely “full and felt”? These are just a few of the questions that we will consider through artist-talks, lectures, seminars, group discussions and creative photographic activities. Working both individually and collectively, we will explore ourselves, our physical connection to the surrounding world, and the sensorial power and possibilities of photography. During the course students will create new photographic works that evoke and engage with the senses, and the concept of “sense-impressions” (see below), and will collectively develop, create and edit together a body-of-work that represents and reflects upon their shared environment, as well as their own experiences within it.

“At present I am preoccupied with sense-impressions...
In putting my powers of observation to the test,
I have found a new interest in life…
Can I learn to look at things with clear, fresh eyes?
How much can I take in at a single glance?
Can the grooves of old mental habits be effaced?
This is what I am trying to discover.”
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Italian Journey (1786)

Assessment methods

Throughout the working process of this course, students are required to create new photographic works and communicate the progress and outcomes of their process and work through a sketchbook/critical-journal, group discussions, individual oral presentations, and participation in a collaborative group project.

Teaching tools

Students are REQUIRED to bring the following to this course:

- a Digital Camera (ideally a stand-alone camera; a camera-phone is suitable if necessary).
- a Laptop with basic photo-editing software.
- a Sketchbook / Journal / Notebook (physical or digital).
- a Reproduction of a Photograph - made by another photographer - that you regard as a “sense-impression” and/or “full and felt”– i.e. an image that for you evokes or speaks to a physical and sensorial experience, such as a sound, a smell, a taste, a touch, balance and/or body-awareness (as well as a sight).

Students can OPTIONALLY bring the following:

- additional Art Supplies: pens, pencils, markers, paint, brushes, tape, post-its, scissors, cutters, glue, art papers, fabric/textiles, needles and thread, ephemera, etc.
- a Portfolio of current work-in-progress (digital or physical) – before the start of the course, please indicate if you would like to reserve time for an individual portfolio consultation with Aaron Schuman.

Language

English

Links to further information

https://mackbooks.co.uk/products/sonata-br-aaron-schuman

Office hours

See the website of Aaron Zachary Schuman