First-Year Studies: The Photograph Now

For its first 100 years, photography was black-and-white—an abstraction of human sightedness. Newly born photography shook (and was shaken by) painting, as it pushed into the world as an engine of modern consciousness. When color photography came along, it didn’t hesitate to present new pleasures and new problems to thoughtful practitioners and adherents of the medium. The recent arrival of digital photography has created an image culture that is changing by the day—and changing the world by the day. Through black-and-white, color, and digital darkroom work and a broad range of readings, students will grow familiar with photographic practices and theories as they respond to the pull of their individual aesthetic.