Mandatory Current Reading Assignment: Read and class discussion to follow.

Photography is now an established topic for Art History and critical discourse, and because it’s a quintessentially democratic activity – especially with digital workflow and the internet – it’s a medium and a practise with special interest.

In art, theory, and photography, there’s usually a canon of accepted work central to any discussion. Full text

Although this is a couple days late, the full moon has brought this online audio piece to NPR. Re-Creating an Ansel Adams Masterpiece.

When I give students photo assignments I request that they provide all the information mentioned in this article: f-stop, shutter speed, type of film, develop process (film & paper), and additional notes. Even in the cases of using digital equiptment, a record of exposures and etc. should be provided.

PHOTO 2 Pgy 4410

Correcting for film reciprocity failure

In ideal world, if the light intensity doubles, one can always halve the exposure time to obtain identical exposure on photographic materials. Or, when the light intensity halves, one can double the exposure time to compensate. This is the "reciprocity law" which usually but not always applies to real world materials; there are cases where real materials fail to obey this law. The failure is seen when light intensity is extremely low as in nightscape photography, or extremely high as in some flash exposures. Although the degree of this phenomenon is governed by the light intensity of the exposure, it is often described in terms of exposure duration for practical photography purposes. This simplification works as long as you are measuring incident light (or reflected metering off standard gray card) and aiming at normal exposure level. In this article, we use intensity for theoretical discussions and exposure duration for practical aspects.

Kodak Reciprocity Correction Data for Black and White Films

Reciprocity law failure

Night Photography Part 1, 2 & 3

More inspiration. Must see.

American Idylls
Phil Bergerson captures U.S. Iconography
By Matthew McKinnon | Photographs by Phil Bergerson

Sports Illustrated's digital workflow

Steve Fine is looking at two pictures every second. He's been keeping up that pace, with frequent short interruptions, for over four hours, and he'll keep it up for three more. Four-megapixel JPEGs of football players, coaches, fans, entertainers, and certain assets belonging to Miss Janet Jackson go flashing across his computer screen in a dizzying sequence. read full article

Over the last several years, as the International Center of Photography in Midtown has moved away from the photojournalism roots of its founder, Cornell Capa, and more eagerly explored art photography and questions about the medium itself, it has staged several exhibitions that it considered challenging.

A Helmut Newton show in 2001, with giant, glossy, highly sexual portraits of mostly naked women, raised inevitable questions about the center's intentions. An exhibition last year of the horrific photographs taken by American guards at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq stirred a more complex critical debate about whether such pictures belonged in a museum.

But undoubtedly the most difficult show staged to date is the one that opened yesterday, the first retrospective of the work of Larry Clark, whose stark, intimate photographs and movies of teenagers having sex, shooting drugs and waving guns have been hugely influential but also widely reviled by many who consider them little more than pornography.

Brian Wallis, director of exhibitions, said the center decided to do the show in part because it spoke to the center's own evolution. Mr. Clark, 62, is seen as a bridge between photojournalism - as a youth he admired and tried to emulate the work of W. Eugene Smith in Life magazine - and the kind of raw art photography that has influenced Nan Goldin and many others in the art and fashion worlds. The show was also felt to be timely because many of the themes that run through Mr. Clark's work - teenage sexuality, cruelty, vulnerability and objectification - are being widely discussed and debated now.Full text NYTimes

Assignment: PGY 4410c (photo 2) and PGY 4440c (photo topics) Students from both classes should have read and listened to the previous assignment. Can you "read" your own photographs and critique it in the same way as was talked about?

Post-Spring Break reading:
Picture Making Meaning: An Interview with Jeff Wall
By Jan Estep

"Introduction: How do we pictorially depict the world in a manner that gives pleasure? And what comprises the basis of that pleasure? These are two fundamental questions that artists, critics, and historians have debated since the first aesthetic experience was institutionalized, and they seem to be questions that fuel the photography of Jeff Wall." [read more]

Full class discussions for our next critique. Be prepared!