The interactive relationship that painting and photography have had for 174 years is the topic of this class session. We attempt to look at how painting influenced photography and vice-versa. We also look briefly at how what photographs “look like” influence our understanding of what they are.

Photography as a form of transportation is the topic for class #5. We look at how the advent of wet-plate collodion technology spurred the advance of travel and landscape photography, with a special emphasis on photography of the American west. There is also a brief exploration of 20th century photographers who went “on the road” as well as a look at the way 21st Century technology like Google Earth, Gigapan and Photosynth are changing the way in which we are able to see the distant parts of the globe for ourselves.

The 4th class meeting starts a more conceptual approach to the medium’s history. We look at 19th, 20th and some 21st century portraits and see if we can draw some conclusions about what makes a good portrait photograph. We also see if we can draw some parallels with the words and ideas of the Transcendentalist thinkers and writers Emerson and Thoreau and see if they can help us illuminate what portraiture means.

In this second part of a two-part survey, we continue our fast trip through the history of photography, attempting to get a handle on who did what, when they did it and how it happened. We start in around 1880 and finish up in the 1990s.

Class session #2 is the first part of a two-part overview of the history of photography; a sort of “condensed” history in order to get a sense of the medium’s “who, what, when and where.” This week, we cover from 1800 B.C. to 1888 A.D.

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In this first class session, we spend some time looking at some of the problems that the photo historian faces, including an introduction to the pioneering work of Daguerre and Fox Talbot.

Field Trip! The Photo History class visits the The Mary L. and Leigh B. Block Photography Study Room at the Art Institute of Chicago, giving us the opportunity to see original images from the history of the medium.

The Art Institute of Chicago:

The 5th and final Photo History Intersession commemorates the anniversary of the death of 19th century photographer Charles Dodgeson. Dodgeson, better known by his writing pen name of Lewis Carroll, was an important and interesting photographer as well as an author.

Alice Liddell – Photograph by Charles Dodgeson aka Lewis Carroll (left) and Julia Margaret Cameron (right)

Click images for larger views

The 4th Photo History Intersession looks at two rather dramatically opposed technical applications of photography: The first X-Ray image, made by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1896 and the first auroral (northern lights) photograph made by Martin Brendel in 1892.

(left) First X-Ray image by Wilhelm Röntgen – 1896 & (right) First auroral (northern lights) photograph by Martin Brendel (1892)

In the third History of Photography Intersession, we look at some interesting events from January first, as we commemorate the birth date of photographer William Klein, the anniversary of the death of Edward Weston, some facts about George Eastman and his inventions and the birth of the Associated Press Wirephoto.