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51-321: Photographic Narrative

Units 9
Department Design
Prerequisites 51-221 and 51-221
Cross Listed 62-326
Related URLs http://www.cmu.edu/cfa/design/

Most photographs tell stories. We see photographs in newspapers, magazines, snapshot albums, on the web, in books, and in posters. In these contexts photographs often work with words to convey meaning, whether they are shown with captions, news stories, or just with titles. Photographs can work without words, too, to create purely visual narratives. In this course, students will make two series of photographs: one that is fiction and one that is non-fiction. In addition to making photographs, students will determine the context in which their photo-stories will be seen. Students may make photo books, for example, or decide that their images will be seen on a website. While students are making photographs, we will explore the rich traditions of photo-graphic story-telling that range from the world-oriented work of photo-journalist W. Eugene Smith to the documentarians such as Walker Evans, Nicholas Nixon, and Alec Soth. We will look at photographers, too, who constructed private worlds, such as Duane Michals, Cindy Sherman, Bruce Charlesworth, and Laurie Simmons. As students explore both fiction and non-fiction through photographs, we will look at the interesting interplay between words and photographic images; how images are paced and scaled to create tempos; how photographs are sequenced to tell stories; and other formal elements involved in creating visual narratives. 12-15 students Prerequisite¿a college level photography course.

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Sections

No sections available for Spring 2009

Section Time Day Instructor(s) Location
A 08:30 am – 11:20 am F Brodsky MM 227

Textbooks

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