Fall 2026

Professors

Erika Wolf (European University at Saint Petersburg)

Schedule

Monday

From 13:00

to 14:30

Wednesday

From 13:00

to 14:30

Course description
"The media have substituted themselves for the older world. Even if we should wish to recover that older world we can do it only by an intensive study of the ways in which the media have swallowed it." ---Marshall McLuhan

Photography does not have a single history, but multiple and sometimes competing histories. This course offers a selective historical and thematic survey of photography from pre-photographic image-making to the present. It is organized around three interconnected dimensions of the medium: photography as a technology, as a form of documentation, and as an art.

The course will examine the emergence of photography as a technology for recording and organizing the visible world; its evolving relationship to painting, print culture, cinema, and other art forms; and its connections to fields of knowledge including medicine, anthropology, history, and the natural sciences. We will also consider photography's role in colonialism and postcolonial critique, the development of mass culture, and systems of surveillance and social control. Students will encounter photographic images in a range of contexts, including art, advertising, journalism, propaganda, private albums, and scientific documentation.

Throughout the course, particular attention will be given to photography's relationship to history and memory. Photographs are frequently treated as evidence of what has happened, yet they do not simply preserve the past. They select, frame, circulate, and sometimes obscure it. We will examine how photographs participate in the construction of historical knowledge and personal and collective memory, as well as how photographic archives can produce absences and silences. Through class discussions of major texts in the study of photography, we will also consider the distinctive qualities of the photographic image and questions concerning the nature of "photographic truth."

Venice will serve as an important field site for the course. Through planned visits to local collections and exhibitions, students will examine photographic materials firsthand. Although the digital revolution has encouraged us to think of photographs as immaterial images, students will develop an understanding of historical photographs as image-objects with distinctive formats, surfaces, inscriptions, uses, and visual qualities. We will also explore investigate the ways in which photography has represented and shaped the city of Venice itself.

Learning outcomes
By the end of the course, students should be able to:

Demonstrate a historically grounded understanding of major developments, practitioners, and issues in the history of photography.
Comprehend the technical processes behind different types of photography.
Explain how photography has contributed to the production of historical knowledge and to the formation of personal, cultural, and collective memory.
Evaluate photography's claims to truth and evidence in contexts including science, journalism, propaganda, advertising, art, and private life.
Locate, examine, and assess photographic sources available in archives, libraries, museums, exhibitions, and other local repositories.
Communicate visual and historical arguments effectively and collaborate with students from different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds.

Required preliminary knowledge
The history of photography is inherently interdisciplinary. Emerging from the modern sciences during a period of rapid technological change, photography has profoundly influenced how people record, understand, and encounter the world. No previous training in the history of technology or visual studies is required. Students should have a general interest in historical and contemporary visual culture and a willingness to read closely, examine images attentively, and think critically about the uses and consequences of photographs in different cultural and disciplinary contexts.

Assessment
There are five components of the assessment:

Class Engagement and Discussion Facilitation 15%
Close Analysis of a Photograph 15%
Worksheets 20%
Group Research Project and Presentation 25%
Examination 25%

Teaching methods
The course will be taught through a combination of lectures, seminar discussions, close visual analysis, guided reading of primary and secondary texts, practical exercises, student-led activities, and site visits. The course will encourage students to bring different disciplinary methods and cultural experiences into conversation. Collaborative activities will emphasize the productive comparison of perspectives and experiences.

Venice itself will function as a site of photographic research. Visits to local collections and exhibitions will allow students to examine photographic objects and institutional practices firsthand. The urban environment will also provide material for considering how photography represents places, constructs historical narratives, and contributes to cultural memory.

Weekly breakdown of class topics

WEEK 1: Introduction

What is a Photograph? What might be the history of photography?
Camera Obscura: The Origins of Photography

Week 2: The First Photographers and Photographs

Daguerre and the Daguerreotype
Talbot and the Calotype

Week 3: The Photograph as Document

Explorers, Travelers, Tourists, Colonists, Missionaries
Photography and the Recording of History

Week 4: Focus on the Body

Portraiture and the Human Countenance
Anthropometry, Ethnography and Medical Photography

Week 5: Photography and Science

Recording the Invisible (Astronomy, Micrography, the X-Ray)
Instant Impressions, Motion, and Colour

Week 6: "New Media" and Consumer Photography