AHT 4020 - Pictorialism and Modernism in Photography

At the turn of the last century, the photographic print was elevated to the status of fine art though, among others, the efforts of photographers including Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Gertrude Kasebier, and Clarence White who embraced the idea that photographic images had the potential to engage the viewers’ emotions. This course will explore this movement’s major figures and their works as well as publications such as Camera Work, which Stieglitz edited to promote “the serious recognition of photography as an additional medium of pictorial expression.” The course then plots photography’s transition away from pictorialist concerns and into the age of modernism, and the technological, theoretical, and aesthetic challenges of the twentieth century, including analyses of major European and American photographers, theorists and critics. Students in this class will mine NHIA’s Teti Collection of rare photography books which showcases the evolution of photography as a fine art through the works of Edward Steichen, Alfred Stieglitz, Alvin Langdon Coburn and many others. (4 Credits)