Università Roma Tre

The course aims to explore the history and present of journalistic photography, its role as a 'window on the world' in modern visual culture and in the formation of what can be considered a 'global consciousness'.

The work of the main personalities who have marked the history of photojournalism will be retraced, as well as the relationship between myth and reality of the profession, between the aspiration to objectivity and the compromises of the editorial chain, between denunciation and censorship, from its origins to the present day. From the golden age of magazines to war photography. The current crisis of the profession. The new challenges of information through images to the aestheticisation and decontextualisation of journalistic photography in the digital age.

Elements of knowledge will be provided on the themes of digital manipulation, debunking of 'hoaxes' in the age of fakenews, political storytelling and post-truth, with an emphasis on the ethics of photography, the main codes of ethics, the legal rules for the use of images and copyright.

The workshop will make students measure themselves directly with the analysis of the snapshots of the major photoreporters and the most significant magazines, enabling them to read them also in relation to the era, the economy, the publishing market, figurative art and the history of the mentality of the societies in which they were taken, so as to contribute to consolidating their overall knowledge of the modern and contemporary age.

Dondero, Mario with Giordana, Emanuele. Lo scatto umano. Viaggio nel fotogiornalismo da Budapest a New York. Bari: Laterza, 2017

Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador, 2004

Pastoureau, Michel. Dizionario dei colori del nostro tempo. Milan: Ponte alle Grazie, 2018 (it may be replaced by pdf of lectures)

Fadigati, Neri. Il mestiere di vedere. Introduction to photojournalism. Pisa University Press, 2019

Lucas, Uliano and Agliani, Tatiana. La realtà e lo sguardo. Storia del fotogiornalismo in Italia. Turin: Einaudi, 2016

Capa, Robert. Slightly Out of Focus. New York: Modern Library, 2001

Morris, John G. Get the Picture. A personal History of Photojournalism, University of Chicago Press, 2002

Pdf (or notes) of classroom lectures