Photography of Disappearance, ARTH 3559

Professor Claire Raymond

This course explores connections between photography and the vanishing image. Interpreting the beginning of photography as a struggle against disappearance, for example Henry Fox Talbot’s “fairy pictures” at the cusp of the technology, the course will move quickly through a consideration of nineteenth-century photography and then delve into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by looking at photographers who invoke disappearance by different means: Ralph Meatyard, Duane Michals, Francesa Woodman, An-My Le, Graham MacIndoe, Paula Luttringer. multi-media works by Rebecca Belmore, Sally Mann, Ana Mendieta, Carrie Mae Weems, and others. The course is partly about theories of aesthetics and also closely follows this specific theme of disappearance in photographs. Some of the material we cover contends with violence, insofar as violence is often a precipitate of certain kinds of disappearance.

Professor Claire Raymond's contact information:

Fayerweather 209,  Scp2u@virginia.edu

Office Hours 12.30 until 2 pm Tuesdays and Thursdays and by appointment

Required Texts:

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

Roland Barthes, Mythologies

Burning with Desire, Geoffrey Batchen

Photography Degree Zero, Geoffrey Batchen

Course Packet: please purchase the course packet from NK Print and Design, 7 Elliewood (formerly Brillig Books). Please purchase the course packet, it contains a significant part of the course readings.

Images

Graham MacIndoe “Missing Persons”

An-My Le “Small Wars”

Photographs by Francesca Woodman

Photographs by Ralph Meatyard

Photographs by Ana Mendieta

Photographs by Carrie Mae Weems

Photographs by Sally Mann

Spirit Photography (various photographers)

Photographs by Duane Michals

Photographs by Gregory Crewdson

Rebecca Belmore, “The Named and the Un-named”

Paula Luttringer El Lamento de Los Muros/the Wailing of the Walls

*All images on our class Collab site unless otherwise noted

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Course Schedule: please note, the texts listed below are both written texts and image texts. You are expected to read the written texts before class, whereas we will view the images together during class.

August 27^th – September 5^th

Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida

please read pages 1-42 by August 29th; read pages 42-92 for class September 3rd; read pages 92-119 for class September 5th

Graham MacIndoe “Missing Persons”

http://grahammacindoe.com/missing/1/

An-My Le “Small Wars”

http://blackandmissing.org/

September 10^th&12^th

Readings from Batchen, Burning with Desire, from beginning through page 54. By September 10th, please read Burning with Desire through page 54. Please also read "Faces of the Living Dead" on our Collab site. By September 12th, please read the first three articles, interspersed with images, on the Collab site file titled "The Perfect Medium." We will save the fourth article from this folder for next week's reading.

Spirit Photography

From collab Faces of the Living Dead

From collab The Perfect Medium

September 17^th&19^th

Readings from Collab, The Perfect Medium, "Ghost Dialectics,"

For Tuesday Sept.17 please read "Ghost Dialectics" from Collab, and please also read Agamben "Melancholy Angel" from our Course Packet

From collab, Paula Luttringer

For Thursday, please read from Collab "Los Desaparecidos" read each part of the file; also please read Paula Luttringer Aperture article, on Collab, and read Barthes, Mythologies, selected chapters (tba)

Images from Paula Luttringer, “The Wailing of the Walls”

http://prisonphotography.org/2010/06/11/recovering-remembering-returning-the-wailing-of-the-walls-by-paula-luttringer/

September 24^th& 26^th

For Tuesday, read from collab, Baudrillard’s Photography

for Tuesday read from course packet, Baudrillard "The Evil Demon of Images"

For Thursday, read from course packet, Armstrong, "Francesca Woodman A Ghost in the House of the Woman Artist"

Francesca Woodman photographs

Ralph Meatyard photographs

October 1^st&3^rd

Walter Benjamin, for Tuesday please read “A Short History of Photography”

Walter Benjamin, and for Tuesday please read “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”

For Thursday from course packet read, Watney, "The Rhetoric of AIDS"

for Thursday from course packet read, Virillio, "The Aesthetics of Disappearance"

Images from Felix Gonzalez Torres (on Collab)

http://felixgonzalez-torresfoundation.org/

see also http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/articles/genteel-iconoclasm

October 8^th& 10^th

For Tuesday please read from course packet, Michael Fried, “Barthes' Punctum"

for Thursday read from course packet, Levinas "Reality and Its Shadow"

Photographs by Ralph Meatyard

October 17^th

read Batchen, Photography Degree Zero, chapters 2, and 4

From Collab, Citizen Ghost (images)

five page mid term paper prospectus due, printed, and in class today

October 22^nd&24^th

Photographs by Ana Mendieta, Silueta Series

Photographs by Francesca Woodman

read for Tuesday Batchen, Burning with Desire, pages 54-102

read for Thursday Batchen, Photography Degree Zero, chapters 6 and 9

October 29^th&31^st

From course packet, read for Tuesday Claudette Lauzon "What the Body Remembers"

From course packet, read for Thursday Amber Dean "Space, Temporality, History"

please also paste in this address and read this article:

http://www.aboriginalcuratorialcollective.org/features/bearrobe.html

from Collab, photographs and mixed media by Rebecca Belmore

November 5^th&7^th

for Tuesday read from course packet, Nancy, "Art, A Fragment"

for Thursday read from course packet, Phillips "Disappearing Acts"

Photographic works by Carrie Mae Weems, The Hampton Project

November 12^th &14^th

For Tuesday from course packet, read "Being is Not Gathered"

for Thursday from course packet, Fried, "Jeff Wall and Absorption"

Photographs by Gregory Crewdson, Duane Michals, and also

Photographs by Jeff Wall

November 19^th &21^st

For Tuesday, from collab, read Bourdieu, Distinction

For Thursday from collab, Mulvey Visual Please Narrative Cinema

Photographs by Sally Mann, Deep South

Photographs by Carrie Mae Weems, Louisiana Project 

first draft of paper, due in class Thursday November 21st, should be a readable, genuine effort at a draft, and will be graded: double spaced, 12 point Times New Roman Font, standard margins. You must attend class to turn in this paper.

November 26^th

Open Discussion: Term paper topics. For this class, the Tuesday before Thanksgiving holiday, please come to class prepared to discuss your term paper and, if you like, to present problems that you would like to solve in the paper before presenting the final version at the semester’s close.

December 3^rd& 5^th

From course packet, Lyotard, "The Sublime and the Avant Garde"

From course packet, Derrida, "Spectrographies"

term paper due Monday, December 9th, printed. Please use 12 point font, Times New Roman, standard margins. Please be aware that part of your grade in the term paper is showing the polished and perfected work that should be produced by working through stages of drafting the paper—the prospectus, the full-length draft, and the final paper. I will be in the office part of the day Monday, and will plan to pick up the box, which will be set in front of my office, Fayerweather 209, at 4 pm. No late papers, please!

Course Requirements:

This seminar depends on your consistent and active participation, therefore a significant percentage of your grade is generated by attending class and participating in discussion. There also will be a five page paper prospectus due at the mid term; a paper draft due roughly three quarters of the way through the semester; a final term paper due the last day of class. The completed paper shall be fifteen pages long, and no shorter. Fifteen pages means fifteen pages of writing: images, which certainly should be part of the paper, do not count towards the paper's length. The above described components of the paper are worth 5 %, 25 %, and 45 % of your grade, respectively. Class participation counts for 25% of your grade. Class participation means firstly attending class regularly and also means participating meaningfully in discussion of readings and images. It is strongly suggested that you meet with me to discuss the topic of your paper well before the prospectus is due. The paper topic, while up to you, should intersect in a meaningful way with the course topics, either by taking up a photographer or theorist covered in the course and extending consideration of her or his work, or by taking up a question raised by the course and extending consideration of this question. The paper should be written to address a thesis question that we formulate together, based on your interests, when we meet to discuss your paper topic.

Plagiarism, the copying of words or ideas from other people, books, or sources, without citing them, is an offense punishable by a failing grade and appearance before the university’s Honor’s Committee. Written texts, and spoken texts (such as lectures) must be cited if they are incorporated into your paper. Ideas as well as verbatim quotes must be cited. When in doubt: cite it!

Thank you! Looking forward to this semester!

CR

Photography of Disappearance

Photography of Disappearance, ARTH 3559

This course explores connections between photography and the vanishing image. Interpreting the beginning of photography as a struggle against disappearance, for example Henry Fox Talbot’s “fairy pictures” at the cusp of the technology, the course will move quickly through a consideration of nineteenth-century photography and then delve into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries by looking at photographers who invoke disappearance by different means: Ralph Meatyard, Duane Michals, Francesa Woodman, An-My Le, Graham MacIndoe, Paula Luttringer. multi-media works by Rebecca Belmore, Sally Mann, Ana Mendieta, Carrie Mae Weems, and others. The course is partly about theories of aesthetics and also closely follows this specific theme of disappearance in photographs. Some of the material we cover contends with violence, insofar as violence is often a precipitate of certain kinds of disappearance.