Università Roma Tre

The course examines the history of photography from its origins to today, considering photography as both a medium of artistic expression and as a social practice. We will analyze the Nineteenth-century origins of the medium, its ever more pervasive dissemination in all the spheres of everyday life, and the main technological metamorphoses that have shaped its development, up to the digital transition and the current employment in the online context. With the support of the writings of some of the foremost scholars of the medium (i.e. Roland Barthes, as well as Susan Sontag, Georges Didi-Huberman and others), we will reflect on some of the most important photographic artists (from Talbot to Nadar, from Alfred Stieglitz to Henri Cartier-Bresson, from Berenice Abbott to Luigi Ghirri), on the elements that grant photography its expressive force, and on the kind of involvement these images may elicit.

The syllabus with the final course program will be made available around the start of the course itself.

Roland Barthes, "Camera Lucida", Hill & Wang, New York, 1980.
Collection of essays selected by the professor.