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HIST351: How the Camera Changed the World: The Photographic Image in History

Special Subject (60 credits)

This course examines the impact of the camera upon society from the 1820s, when Nicephore Niepce first succeeded in fixing the first permanent image in the history of photography, to the present-day. While the course will present an overview of the most important technical developments and aesthetic debates in the history of photography, it is not an art history course. Its concern is with the multitudinous ways in which the camera has changed the world in which we live. Students will study a wide range of applications of photographic images, from family albums to ethnographic exhibitions, and commercial advertising to political propaganda.

As with all Special Subjects, this course is built around close engagement with primary sources. In this case, however, the primary sources in question are mainly visual. Sessions will centre upon photographic images themselves, backed up with primary and secondary readings (including writings of photographers). Photographers studied include Atget, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Cartier-Bresson, Leni Riefenstahl, Rodchenko, Man Ray, Lee Miller, Robert Mapplethorpe, Nobuyoshi Araki and Helmut Newton - but equal attention will be given to the media (newspapers, magazines, posters, pictorial postcards, film, TV, the Internet) through which photographic images have made their impact.

Teaching Arrangements: All Special Subjects in the History department operate on the basis of 66 hours of official teaching contact, equivalent to 3 hours per week over a period spanning 22 weeks (10 weeks in Michaelmas Term of year 3, 10 weeks in Lent Term of year 3, and 2 weeks [revision seminars] in Summer Term of year 3), plus individual consultations. Working within the 66-hour overall figure, teaching approaches will vary due to the specialist nature of the courses.

For further information on HIST351 visit the Lancaster University Online Courses Handbook.

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