40133 - AFPG - Lab-based Course on Photography I

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course the student knows the main theoretical foundations of photography useful for clarifying the process that leads to the creation of the analog and digital image. He acquires, through the control of the frame and the study of composition, a technique for representing landscape and architecture.

Course contents

Since its origins, photography has intertwined dense and complex relationships with art and society, activating new cognitive possibilities, new ways of telling, thinking and seeing. The "strategies of the gaze" that it can deploy have the ability to move along a line that goes beyond consolidated representations of the landscape to explore the multiple qualities of reality. In this sense, the course intends to place photography in an interstitial space between the methods of investigation and study of the territory, in a context of non-exclusion between different disciplinary discourses capable of attributing to it adequate conditions of existence and a specific level of cognitive effectiveness. Describing and understanding contemporary space presupposes a perceptive experience linked to movement on the site, a careful observation aimed at deciphering a complex and consolidated stratification of signs and materials resulting from minimal, unconscious rationalities, as well as large symbolic gestures: photographing with care and insistence , approaching and moving around objects will allow us to develop a visual project and bring out different ways of seeing and putting into images, to revive perceptions made opaque by custom and to rediscover the ethos of photography, that of educate ourselves to an "intensive vision" (L. Moholy-Nagy).

Two dimensions form the backdrop to the work required: on the one hand the issues linked to the development of a project, issues such as the relationship between photography and clients, the search for spaces of expressive freedom connected with photographing starting from defined constraints and rules, the balance between specialist knowledge and the necessary multidisciplinary dialogue; on the other, the need to restore subjective experiences, to contribute to the creation of a collective archive, bringing into play the acquisition of a narrative dimension that favors a different valorisation of the contents conveyed by the materials produced and which leads to greater effectiveness in terms of “extension of knowledge”.

Photography, understood as an artistic practice aware of its specific means, can therefore be assigned a supporting role in a different valorization of the common sense of places and the elements that constitute their physical structure.

Readings/Bibliography

Barthes, Roland, La chambre clair. Note sur la photographie, Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1980 (trad. it. La camera chiara. Nota sulla fotografia, Einaudi, Torino, 1980 | en. transl. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography, Hill and Wang, 1982).

Costantini, Paolo (a cura di), Venezia-Marghera: fotografia e trasformazioni nella città contemporanea, Milano, Charta, 1997.

Krauss, Rosalind, Le Photographique, Editions Macula, Paris, 1990 (trad. it. Teoria e storia della fotografia, a cura di Elio Grazioli, Bruno Mondadori, Milano, 1996).

Krauss, Rosalind, Le Photographique, Editions Macula, Paris, 1990 (trad. it. Teoria e storia della fotografia, a cura di Elio Grazioli, Bruno Mondadori, Milano, 1996).

Lugon, Olivier, Le style documentaire d'August Sander a Walker Evans, 1920-1945. Paris. Macula, 2001 (trad. it. Lo stile documentario in fotografia: da August Sander a Walker Evans1920-1945. Milano, Electa, 2008)

Teaching methods

During the lessons, slides will be shown, books analyzed and the works presented by each student discussed.

Assessment methods

The final exam will consist of a discussion on the exercise produced during the course and on the themes developed during the lessons.

Teaching tools

The equipment supplied by the Department - analogue cameras, which will be used by students accompanied by the teacher.

Office hours

See the website of Mariano Andreani