This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
This module traces the technical and social histories of photography as the medium was developed in France from its earliest days with the inventions of Nicéphore Niepce, Louis Daguerre, and Lumières brothers through the experimental artworks of local and immigrant photographers in Paris such as Marcel Duchamp, László Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray. The module focuses on three key periods: the technical developments of the early to mid-nineteenth century, the social and political uses of photography in the 19th & early 20th centuries (eg. police documentation; colonization; cartes de visite; pornography; scientific analysis of hysterical women at l'hôpital Pitié-Salpêtrière), and early theorizations of the medium explored by French intellectuals (eg. Henri Bergson, André Bazin, Roland Barthes). Particular attention will be given to photography’s relationship to other arts and sciences being explored in Paris at the same time: poetry, painting, cinema, optical visual experiments.
Total Contact Hours: 30
Private Study Hours: 270
Total Study Hours: 300
Main assessment methods:
Essay one (2,000 words) – 35%
Essay two (4,000 words) – 55%
Seminar Performance – 10%
NB: all elements of the module must be passed
Reassessment methods:
Like for Like
Indicative Reading List:
Barthes, Roland (1981) Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography, London: Hill and Wang
Bazin, André (1960) "Ontology of the Photographic Image," Film Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 4. 4-9.
Hellmann, Karen (2016) Real/Ideal: Photography in Mid-Nineteenth-Century France, Los Angeles: J Paul Getty Trust
Mullarkey, John & Charlotte de Mille (2013) Bergson and the Art of Immanence: Painting, Photography, Film, Performance, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Rabinow, Paul, (1989) French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sheehan, Tanya and Andres Zervigon (2015) Photography and Its Origins, Oxford and New York, Routledge
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
The intended subject specific learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
1 Reflect upon the specificity of photography as historically determined phenomenon developed in 19th and 20th century Paris.
2 To understand photography as a cultural, social, technical and aesthetic phenomenon;
3 Comprehensive understanding of the aesthetic strategies of photography as developed in relationship to the broader Parisian cultural, political, historical milieu of production;
4 Comprehensive understanding of modernity in Paris as a cultural/historical context within which to interpret photography;
5 Apply this cultural/historical framework in elucidating the particularity of photography;
6 Develop familiarity with French historical writings (in translation) on photography in period of modernity, and contemporary theories that elucidate photography;
7 Evaluate critically historical French writing and theories of photography, and extend to develop new theories for analysing photographs and photography within modernity;
The intended generic learning outcomes.
On successfully completing the module students will be able to:
1 Critically analyse and make use of reading material and cultural/historical frameworks;
2 Give sustained attention and concentration in order to examine the details of visual and written material;
3 Demonstrate advanced skills of cogency, structure and presentation of arguments;
4 Develop communication skills appropriate to the subject matter: develop wide vocabulary; express complex ideas, arguments and subtleties of meaning; select and shape language to achieve sophisticated effects.
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