Credit Points: 30
Study Time: 300 Hours

This unit introduces a range of concerns in contemporary image-making and is intended to reinforce your knowledge and understanding of historic and current photographic issues. Introduced by a series of seminars on current and emerging subjects in contemporary photographic practice it will critically discuss issues in a broad historical and cultural context. You will be required to select, research and develop a body of practical work on a specific subject topic.

Outline Syllabus
An indicative guide to the content covered by this unit:

This unit will identify and develop a variety of concerns. Themes will be chosen from a specific list of topics that are current and relevant to contemporary practice. Typically these could include:

• Appropriation and post-production
• Site-specific
• Image and Word
• Land
• The Body
• Painting and photography
• The Sublime

Method of Delivery
Lectures, seminars, individual project, independent learning, tutorials, viewings and critique.

Aims

A1 To provide opportunities for sustained theoretical and critical research and practice into aspects of contemporary photographic issues.
A2 To encourage you to explore the relevance of issues and practice addressed by the syllabus in your own creative work.
A3 To provide opportunities for the development and evaluation of independent learning skills.
A4 To provide you with opportunities to discuss the progress of your ideas and work, and the potential areas upon which you might focus in subsequent units.
A5 To provide opportunities for you to develop sound technical and presentational skills.

Learning Outcomes
On completion of this unit you will be able to:

LO1 Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of issues addressed in contemporary photography, through practice and individual presentation.
LO2 Demonstrate awareness and insight into the relevance of the issues and practice in your own creative work.
LO3 Demonstrate the ability to work independently.
LO4 Demonstrate a sense of the potential direction for your creative work.
LO5 Demonstrate sound technical and presentational skills.

Reference Material

Key
Solomon-Godeau, Abigail (1994) Photography at the dock: essays on photographic history, institutions and practices. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press
Squiers, Carol (1999) Over exposed: essays on contemporary photography. New York: New Press
Wallis, Brian (ed.) (1984) Art after modernism: rethinking representation. New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York with David R. Godine Publisher
Wheale, Nigel (ed.) (1995) The Postmodern Arts: an introductory reader London: Routledge
Beckley, Bill (ed.) (2001) Sticky sublime. New York: Allworth Press

Recommended
Doy, Gen (2000) Black Visual Culture: Modernity and Post-Modernity London: I.B.Tauris Publishers
Krauss, Rosalind E. (1985) The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press
Owens, Craig (1992). Beyond recognition: representation, power, and culture Berkeley: University of California Press
Roberts, John (1990) The art of interruption: realism, photography and the everyday. Manchester: Manchester University Press
Schama, Simon (1996) Landscape and memory. New York: Alfred A. Knopf