About the Readings

Reading are listed in alphabetical order, not the order in which they are assigned (not all essays will be assigned, but it is suggested they they all be read). The page is password protected to ensure copyright. Many of the essays are PDF files, which requires a PDF reader, like the free Adobe Reader. Notes from BW are in [ ].

Arago, D.F. (1839). Report. In A. Trachetenberg (Ed.), Classic Essays on Photography (pp. 15 – 25). Leete’s Island Books: New Haven, CT. [pdf]

Baudelaire, C. (1862). The modern public and photography. In A. Trachetenberg (Ed.), Classic Essays on Photography (pp. 83 – 89). Leete’s Island Books: New Haven, CT. [pdf]

Benjamin, W. (1973, 2003). Extracts from The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. In A. Wells (Ed.), The photography reader (pp. 42 – 51). New York, NY: Routledge. [PDF]

Berger, J. (1974). Understanding a photograph. In A. Trachetenberg (Ed.), Classic Essays on Photography (pp. 291 – 294). Leete’s Island Books: New Haven, CT. [pdf]

Burgin, V. (1977, 2003). Looking at photographs. In A. Wells (Ed.), The photography reader (pp. 130 – 137). New York, NY: Routledge. [PDF]

Cornell University. (2012, January 1). “Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States.”

Daguerre, L.J.M. (1839). Daguerreotype. In A. Trachetenberg (Ed.), Classic Essays on Photography (pp. 11 – 13). Leete’s Island Books: New Haven, CT. [pdf]

Edwards, R., and Tryon, C. (2009). Political video mashups as allegories of citizen empowerment. First Monday, 14(10).

Ferguson, K. (2011, 2012). Everything is a remix, parts 1 – 4.

Gaylor, B. (2009). RIP: A remix manifesto. EyeSteelFilm / National Film Board of Canada.

golfmnkvn (2009, May 7). Crisis of significance. Youtube.

Highland, M. (2006). As real as your life. Presented in D. Perry Are games better than real life? TED [start watching at 10:00 for Highland’s movie, though I recommend the whole video]

Hine, L.W. (1909). Social photography. In A. Trachetenberg (Ed.), Classic Essays on Photography (pp. 109 – 113). Leete’s Island Books: New Haven, CT. [pdf]

Jenkins, H. (2009). Confronting the challenges of participatory culture. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [This is a link to the PDF for the full monograph, which MIT Press has made available for free.]

Johnson, S. (2009, June 5). How Twitter will change the way we live. Time. [Printable version.]

Kelly, A. (1979, 2003). Self image. In A. Wells (Ed.), The photography reader (pp. 410 – 416). New York, NY: Routledge. [PDF]

Kelly, Kevin. (2008, November 21). Becoming screen literate. The New York Times. [Printable version.]

Kuhn, A. (1991, 2003). Remembrance. In A. Wells (Ed.), The photography reader (pp. 395 – 401). New York, NY: Routledge. [PDF]

Lister, M. (1995, 2003). Extracts from Introduction to the photographic images in digital culture. In A. Wells (Ed.), The photography reader (pp. 218 – 227). New York, NY: Routledge. [PDF]

Manovich, L. (1995, 2003). The paradoxes of digital photography. In A. Wells (Ed.), The photography reader (pp. 240 – 249). New York, NY: Routledge. [PDF]

McCloud, S. (1994). Blood in the gutter. Understanding comics: The invisible art. New York: Harper Perennial. [pdf]

McCloud, S. (1994). The vocabulary of comics. Understanding comics: The invisible art. New York: Harper Perennial. [pdf]

McIntosh, J. (2012). A history of subversive remix video before YouTube: Thirty political video mashups made between World War II and 2005. In Fan/Remix Video, edited by Francesca Coppa and Julie Levin Russo, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 9. [note: the article may take a while to load because of the many videos embedded in it; don’t feel like you need to watch the all]

Niepce, J.H. (1839). Memoire on the heliograph. In A. Trachetenberg (Ed.), Classic Essays on Photography (pp. 3 – 10). Leete’s Island Books: New Haven, CT. [pdf]

Rettberg, J.W. (2009). What is a blog? Blogging. Malden, MA: Polity Press.

Ritchin, F. (2009). The social photograph. After photography (pp. 125 – 139). New York, NY: WW Norton & Company. [PDF]

Silver, D. (2009, February 25). The difference between thin and think tweets. Silver in SF.

Sontag, S. (1973, October 18). Photography. The New York review of books. Retrieved from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1973/oct/18/photography/?pagination=false&printpage=true [PDF]

Stieglitz, A. (1899). Pictorial photography. In A. Trachetenberg (Ed.), Classic Essays on Photography (pp. 115 – 123). Leete’s Island Books: New Haven, CT. [pdf]

Tryon, C. (2008). Pop politics: Online parody videos, intertextuality, and political participation. Popular Communication, 6, 209–213. [PDF]

Tryon, C. (2009). from Reinventing cinema: Movies in the age of digital convergence. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. pp. 161 – 173. [PDF]

Vaidhyanathan, S. (2001). Copyright and American culture: Ideas, expressions, and democracy. Copyrights and copywrongs: The rise of intellectual property and how it threatens creativity. New York: NYU Press. pp. 17 – 34. [pdf]

Weston, E. (1969). Seeing photographically. In A. Trachetenberg (Ed.), Classic Essays on Photography (pp. 169 – 175). Leete’s Island Books: New Haven, CT. [pdf]

Yancy, K.B. (2004). Made not only in words: Composition in a new key. College Composition and Communication, 56(2), 297 – 328. [PDF]

Photo Essays

Various photographers, Creepy, Crusty, Crumbling: Illegal Tour of Abandoned Six Flags New Orleans

Various Photographers, Hurricane Sandy, After Landfall

James Mollison, Where Children Sleep

Joseph Rodriguez, Still Here: Stories After Katrina (make sure to select “Show More” in the photo discussion to the right of each image)

Oliver Grottke, Untitled: Portraits

Deborah Parkin, September is the Cruelest Month (wait for slideshow to start) and you can learn more about the series

Robert Knoth, Nuclear Nightmares (warning: many of these images are disturbing)

David Burnett, Aftermath

Chris Jordan, Midway (warning: many of these images are disturbing)

Cosmin Bumbuț, Penitenciarul de Femei Tirgsor (scroll down for English translation of opening text)

Daryl Lange, Hallowed Ground

Gary Fabiano, Living Rooms

Susan Burnstine, Absence of Being

Yves Marchand and Romain Mefre, The Ruins of Detroit

Steve McCurry, Fusion: The Synergy of Images and Words

Miyoko Ihara, Misao the Big Mama and Fukumaru the Cat (note: photo essays of pets are strongly discouraged, but these tell a story over 12 years, which is partly why they are so effective and affective)

Damon Winter, Finding the Right Tool to Tell a War Story and the follow-up Through My Eye, Not Hipstamatic’s