Remaking the Photograph

This one-quarter program will focus on non-traditional photographic processes, including tintypes, double/triple exposure, camera-less images, and pinhole cameras made from unusual objects. The purpose of the program is to help students distance the modern photograph from its easy and ubiquitous production by means of technological marvels such as the mobile phone and digital cameras. Students can expect to relinquish the cleanliness of the modern photographic image in favor of results that will be unexpected, experimental, and often unkowable until it is in a finished state. Students will even come to question when a photograph has arrived in a finished state. This program will emphasize process-as-product; the means by which an image is made has an enormous impact on its legibility and ultimately its content. The program will ask students to synthesize their approach to experimental photography with the content of their images (both formal and conceptual). Students will also be asked to keep documents and notes detailing their experiments and processes, as well as their broader approach to image-making as a form of communication and its current efficacy.