DPI Courses

Pre-requisite: This is the first course in Photography & Imaging: Digital and Analog sequence to be taken in the first year. Open to majors only.

This is an intro class about photographic image making, digital methods of output, and basic theory addressing the cultural uses of photography. This course is designed to familiarize students with fundamental concepts and techniques of photographic equipment, processes, materials, and philosophy of digital photography. This course will familiarize students with the basic use of the camera and workings of Adobe Photoshop as well as scanning, capturing, and outputting digital images. Upon completion of the class, students will know how to digitize, edit, and/or manipulate images in Photoshop, prepare images in Photoshop for the intended output, and output images via printers and other output devices. Students will also develop basic camera and computer imaging skills. Screenings/exhibitions may be assigned as the semester progresses. The course will address the contemporary photographic culture and emphasize the development of individual voice and vision through self-directed projects and research; and the establishment of a self-sufficient working process and critical dialogue.

Pre-requisite: This is the first course in Photography & Imaging: Digital and Analog sequence to be taken in the first year. Open to majors only

This course examines creative expression in the context of traditional analog methodology. It is a class about seeing and translating one’s vision into images. Topics include understanding light as an expressive element in a photograph. Form, content and ideas relating to portraiture, documentary, narrative, landscape and the still life will be incorporated into assignments and discussed at length. Through a series of exercises, students will be immersed in the craft of the medium: understanding exposure and metering, the physical and chemical development of film and print materials, and the means of making fine quality enlargements. Weekly assignments are designed to help the students develop a discipline in their working habits. The weekly critiques are designed to provide students with a forum in which to give each other critical and constructive feedback. Students will view slide lectures on contemporary photography as well as photographs from the medium’s rich past. They will visit and respond to relevant gallery and museum exhibits. The aim of this course is to immerse the student in the issues and ideas that have surfaced in the medium’s 200-year history. It is the teacher’s hope to provide the students with an environment wherein they can grow as perceptive image-makers, interesting thinkers and engaged human beings. Students must also register for Friday Recitation.

Prerequisite: Required for Majors; not open to non-majors. 

Contemporary Imaging Practice is a foundation course in the Tisch Department of Photography and Imaging designed to broaden the student’s aesthetic explorations and to inform their photography in this post-photographic world. The course will expose and explore basic visual ideas in a variety of imaging media to help the student develop a visual language based on contemporary, cross-disciplinary, and cultural-artistic strategies. Through a series of projects and exercises, students will be encouraged to experiment with line, composition, pattern, scale, text/type, collaboration, design, and materials, moving from 2d to 3d worlds in order to develop strong tools for further awareness and visual expression. This is a studio-oriented class, but we will also be learning via readings, artist lectures, slides, videos, field trips (virtual), and other materials.

Prerequisite: Photography & Imaging: Analog and Digital.

Interested non-majors must complete the non-major request form to enroll in this course.

For the final studio foundation level requirement, students are required to take one of any of the Photography & Imaging Multimedia courses-all of which will be conceptual, photo based courses, incorporating elements of moving image, sound and web. 

This course explores photography, visual communication and multimedia in a networked wired world. Multi-platform storytelling is giving photographers and image makers new channels of creativity in which to compose and share stories. Content creators engage in a world that is filled with multiplying technology tools, in ever more contexts and formats. Physical locations are increasingly tagged. Sensors, processors, and memory can be found in everyday objects, even clothing. Websites, i-docs, social media channels, smartphone apps and games compete for our attention with more traditional media outlets, like tv, film and newspapers. In this class we will explore how to create content for and engage in this ever changing digital landscape of ubiquitous computing as photographers, artists, documentary makers, curators and consumers of content. This studio class will allow students to engage with contemporary media options to create engaging and relevant multimedia content, on as many media platforms as make sense. We will use video, audio and photography to tell stories. We will learn how to turn our smart phones into multimedia tools. We will explore HTML5, CSS3, mapping and UX design to help us share our stories. We will explore how content reaches audiences through social media and how to shape it as curators.

Prerequisite: Photography & Imaging: Digital or equivalent experience with department permission. Interested non-majors must complete the non-major request form to enroll in this course. Priority given to DPI majors. 

Contemporary photographers and image-makers employ a wide array of artistic approaches for creating and presenting their work, moving from the screen to the social web to the gallery to the printed page, and beyond. An interdisciplinary approach requires artists to embrace a collaborative spirit and develop their projects across platforms, channels, screens, and communities to reach and engage. This studio class invites students to create a multi-platform project. We will look at some of the ways image-makers are using - and will use – existing and newer platforms to create work and engage audiences. Students will consider and experiment with various methods of presentation and self-expression, including some of the following: stills, gifs, video, web, apps, immersive and augmented experiences, film, interactive storytelling, photo/graphic novels, zines, and social media strategies. Through a series of case studies from Matt Black, Doug Aitken, Thenmozhi Soundararajan, and Katerina Cizek, to name a few, and through their own practice, students will address current issues and practices in making multi-platform work. Production techniques in video, audio, print, and web publishing will assist students in developing the skills needed to create a project.

Prerequisite: Photography & Imaging: Analog and Digital.

This course is intended for students who want to experiment with time-based imaging, photography, video, new media, and online durational performance. Through project development and theoretical dialogue, this course introduces the concepts, strategies, techniques, and critical issues of the visual image in the electronic context: print, animation, mixed media, video, etc. Students will learn software including Adobe Photoshop and Premiere. Creativity and problem solving are strongly emphasized. This course will also discuss pioneering artists in the field, framing a historical context and platform for project investigation. Furthermore, the core of Multimedia Imaging develops an in-depth understanding of the technical and aesthetic foundations of photography and digital technologies.

Prerequisite: Photography & Imaging: Digital or equivalent experience with department permission. Course repeatable for credit. Interested non-majors must complete the non-major request form to enroll in this course. Priority is given to DPI majors. 

In an era where digital technology continues to transform artistic expression, Beyond the Lens invites students to explore the processes that shape photographic meaning after the shutter clicks. This course delves into the creative and technical aspects of post-production, where students will work with their own photographic archives, as well as create new works, focusing on the nuances of editing, manipulation, and final presentation. Students will engage with a range of software—such as Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, and emerging AI technologies—while developing an understanding of the ethical considerations and aesthetic implications of digital manipulation.

While society regularly challenges our perceptions of reality through digital intervention, as artists we must not limit ourselves to digital post-production alone. Choices made in real-world presentation can be as powerful as the image itself. Large-scale prints versus miniatures, photo paper versus alternative substrates, and prints versus photobooks—these choices all create meaning and viewer engagement.

Prerequisite: Photography & Imaging: Analog and Digital. Course repeatable for credit.

Photographers have used portraiture to reveal a certain beauty or truth within their subject. This course will explore traditional and non-traditional approaches to making a portrait through slide lectures, museum and gallery visits, and relevant readings. Students will focus on the development of a body of work that mines the idea of the portrait. The class will explore issues in portraiture including beauty, identity, truth, and artifice. In addition, demonstrations and discussions will deal with lighting, camera format, and project presentation. The course will address the use of text, video, and other media to expand upon traditional notions of the portrait. Critiques and discussions will focus on improving technique, editing, and developing one’s content. Slide lectures will include photographers from the medium’s rich past as well as contemporary photographers working in portraiture. The class seeks to develop in the student a greater understanding of his/her own image making and the potential of the portrait.

Prerequisite: Photography & Imaging: Analog and Digital or permission of the department. Interested non-majors must complete the non-major request form to enroll in this course.

This course is an introduction to photographic lighting, one of the most basic and important aspects of photography. We will examine the studio environment, professional practices and location lighting situations. A series of lighting demonstrations and assignments thoroughly acquaints the student with the application and control of electronic flash and natural lighting. Students discover the creative advantages of a variety of lighting equipment, camera controls, synchro-daylight and painting with light. Color theory, color temperature and color correction are taught by utilizing film and digital mediums. Lighting demonstrations incorporated the use of analog cameras and computer-tethered digital cameras. Students may work in any genre, including but not limited to: figure, portrait, still life, fashion. A final creative portfolio is required by the end of the semester. Cameras, lighting equipment, and basic materials are provided. Students are expected to furnish additional film and supplies.

Prerequisite: Lighting or permission by the Department. 

From Gregory Crewdson to David LaChapelle, photographers are making images that are increasingly complex in their production techniques- rivaling those of Hollywood films. This class picks up on the skills students have learned in basic lighting and allows them to develop a body of work that utilizes more complex lighting and production skills. The class begins with a series of demos and assignments designed to challenge and hone the students existing skills and transitions into a directed project of the students choice later in the semester. Students may work on any project/portfolio they choose, from fine art to fashion, with an emphasis on using light consistently throughout the body of work to convey a unified vision. Students are encouraged to have the broad ideas for a project/portfolio before registering for the class. Topics covered will be: Advanced lighting techniques/light shaping, casting talent/crew, production organization, special effects, RAW image conversion, shooting/lighting on location, and special lighting techniques for documentary projects. This course requires a nonrefundable lab fee.

Prerequisite: Photography & Imaging: Analog, Digital, and Multimedia (can be taken concurrently). Interested non-majors must complete the non-major request form to enroll in this course.

This course will explore the history and evolution of photojournalism through readings, discussions, critiques, and visits from editors and photographers from the New York Times and other periodicals. The first half of the semester, students will be expected to produce weekly assignments under the pressure of deadlines. In the second half, students will focus on a longer-term narrative project. Topics will include: ethics of representation; working in different communities and cultures; the demands of a one-day feature; how to build a story; how to develop your style in a journalistic context; how to present your story ideas and your assignments to editors; the business of photojournalism.

Prerequisite: Photography & Imaging: Multimedia or permission by the Department. Interested non-majors must complete the non-major request form to enroll in this course.

This is an intense design class for the crossover creature who yearns to design their own exhibit, create a street poster, develop an ad campaign, design titles for a film, invent a visual identity for a musical score, etc. This will be a hands-on process-driven class that will push you to imagine, create, and produce. Students must know InDesign.

Prerequisite: Photography & Imaging: Analog and Digital.

Many artists turn to 4x5 and 8x10 large-format cameras for the creative control that view cameras afford, as well as for the high resolution and potentially large scale of the resulting prints. This course introduces the special characteristics of large format photography, including perspective control, creative approaches to selective focus and metering strategies facilitated by single negative processing. The exposure and development methods known as the Zone System will also be considered. Because large format work is physically demanding and relatively slow, this is also an opportunity to work more deliberately and, in some respects, more consciously. It may also inform one’s understanding of the methods and approaches of 19th and early 20th Century artists. The high resolution of large format description can often produce a compelling image of relatively static subject matter that might not otherwise succeed if recorded in smaller formats. Surfaces and details evoke a more “complete”, or even tactile appreciation of some subjects. Following a series of practical exercises during the first half of the course, students are expected to develop an appropriate project on which to concentrate and apply their evolving skills in the production of an original and integrated body of work. Technical material covered includes different large format camera types and applications, lenses and optics, metering, filters, special B&W developers, large format printing and scanning for digital output. Early historical processes are introduced, current exhibitions of artists and photographers in New York are discussed and field trips are arranged. A variety of cameras, lenses and tripods are available for student use. A lab fee is charged for this course. 

Photography & Imaging: Analog, Digital, and Multimedia (can be taken concurrently) or Department Permission. 

Bridging the gap between historical and contemporary photographic practices, this course will incorporate several historical and photographic processes. Special focus will be placed on the intricate photogravure etching plates used to create real intaglio printmaking and photo-screen printing. Additionally, we will be using UV exposure units to expand our cyanotype and anthotype practices. Other photo-printmaking methods, such as gelli plate image transfers and emulsion lifts, will be used to create glass plates reminiscent of historical collodion “dry plates.”

All of these processes are predicated on the mastery of students mastering zone system-based digital negatives, allowing them to bring both traditional analog photos and digitally manipulated compositions into a world of historic and alternative processes. This course is non-toxic, and students will work in DPI's alternative processes lab space. 

Prerequisite: Photography & Imaging: Digital. Non-Repeatable. 

This course systematically examines the upper Manhattan neighborhoods north of 110th Street, including Central Harlem, East Harlem, Morningside Heights, Washington Heights, and Inwood. Students will examine the businesses, institutions, communities, and residents of this section of New York City using photography, video, and audio. Students will document the histories, current events, and culture that have, and continue to unfold, within the diverse communities of African Americans, West Africans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, East Africans, and the medical and university communities, etc. and develop unique and detailed methods for seeing the stories that emerge within this broad intersection of cultural experiences. Students may focus on an individual business, a social club, a family, a learning institution, a library, a park, a museum, a city department (Transit, Parks, Sanitation, etc.), an institution of higher learning, a space that is a historical landmark, nature (yes there is actually a section of woods with hiking paths in upper Manhattan), a specific activity unique to this area, etc. We will place a major emphasis on multi-platform storytelling, stories that exist successfully across multiple analog and digital platforms, and collaborative storytelling. In our current times, it is no longer acceptable to simply tell other people’s stories on their behalf, we must be prepared to tell people’s stories with them, sharing the power and agency of creating art and media that defines the people and stories of the world. 

In past semesters, students have turned their finished work into projects that are then made available to the communities through websites, documentaries, gallery and museum exhibits, public exhibits, social media pages, Youtube channels, and printed materials for distribution both in these communities and outside of them. Some examples of institutions that have used student projects produced for this course are PBS, The Italian American Museum, and The Archdiocese of New York. Students learn how to work together in teams and with families and institutions, and how to gain access to other cultures. The results enter the permanent archives of New York University, ensuring that the material will be available to historians and sociologists for generations to come, preserving the people’s history of the communities, and helping bond NYU more closely to its neighbors throughout Manhattan. This is your opportunity to make a small, yet profound contribution to the great story of New York City.

Prerequisite: Photography & Imaging: P&I Digital and Multimedia or permission of the department. Interested non-majors must complete the non-major request form to enroll in this course. Priority given to DPI majors. 

Type makes language visible, and typography is the art of designing with type. Students cannot effectively utilize typography without a thorough knowledge of InDesign. By learning InDesign and typography simultaneously, students will learn how to set type in the program while examining how to use type as a narrative tool. The class will explore the function of typography and layout through InDesign drills and in-class workshops. Each class begins with an InDesign exercise, and many include key command drills. Students will learn the importance of key commands; by learning these from the start, creativity will not be hindered by a lack of knowledge of the program. The class is structured around two main assignments. Through iterations based around an exhibition of their choosing, students will work with a typographic concept in a variety of contexts. While working on a magazine, students will work with a large variety of type styles and learn the importance of hierarchy.

Offered Fall only. Prerequisite: Juniors and seniors only. Interested Non-majors must complete the non-major request form to enroll in this course.

This class conceives and produces the senior catalog. The workshop nature of the class stresses collaboration and experimentation. Lectures include topics such as making type beautiful, process as place, being a visual scavenger. In addition to exploring the creative process, workshops in Indesign, type design, photo editing, and pagination will be taught throughout the semester. Students will learn the craft and execute a handmade book. After the design process is completed, students begin the production process: choosing paper, constructing digital files, coordinating with a printer, and working out printing budgets.

Yolanda Cuomo, art director, designer and educator, has collaborated for over two decades with both visual and performing artists including Richard Avedon, Paul Simon, Twyla Tharp, Laurie Anderson, Gilles Peress, and Sylvia Plachy. Her studio designed and produced the worldwide exhibition and book, Diane Arbus Revelations, the first major retrospective of Diane Arbus’s photography since 1974. Recent studio projects include the book Performance: Richard Avedon; design of the exhibit Invasion 68: Prague, photographs by Josef Koudelka at the Aperture Gallery, New York; design of the book Access to Life for Magnum Photos; identity graphics for the LOOK3 photo festival in Charlottesville, Virginia; art direction of Aperture magazine, and CR magazine.

Prerequisite: P&I Digital or permission of the department. Interested non-majors must complete the non-major request form to enroll in this course.

Photography and memory have been intertwined since the birth of photography when it was described as a “mirror with a memory.” A photograph can be thought of as a remembrance of the past, a souvenir of a moment in time, a tool or “mirror” that remembers. Photographers have found the concept of memory to be a rich arena reflecting on its relationship to literature, anthropology, philosophy, politics, culture and history. Through slide lectures and readings, we will explore personal and collective memory as they define representations and conventions that shape narratives in family photographs and the broader context of photographic history. The course will explore concepts of memory as they relate to migration and the diaspora, world and geological history, and memory activism, with discussions on the rich field of Memory Studies. Notably, the medium’s transformation from analog to digital, has altered the object-ness of the photograph. Common snapshots now live on the screen, creating a new relationship between photography and memory. Students will work on photographic assignments and a semester-long project reflecting on photography's evolving connection to remembrance. The exploration will navigate the complex processes of encoding, storing, retrieving and expressing memory through this medium, to uncover the dynamic links in the medium’s commitment to preserving and reflecting on memory.

Prerequisite: Photography & Imaging: Analog, Digital, and Multimedia (can be taken concurrently) or Department Permission. 

This course explores the artistic possibilities of working on archive-based projects. Six classes are devoted to field trips to visit archives throughout the city such as The Fales and Taminent Collections at NYU, The New York Times Photo Archive “The Morgue,” The NY Public Library Picture Collection, Visual AIDS, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and The Museum of Modern Art. Student interest helps determine the sites that we visit. We also explore numerous online archives. Each student works on a self-designed semester long project in any media that has an archival component or involves archival research. Students can work with images from archives we visit or any archives or collections (personal or public) they may have access to. Bi-weekly work-in-progress critiques accompany discussions of contemporary and historical art works and assigned readings. Modes of working and presentation are also explored.

Archival images have been an important source and inspiration for many contemporary artists’ projects such as White Women 1915-2015 and Unbranded by Hank Willis Thomas, Evidence by Mike Mandel and Larry Sultan, Pictures from Home by Larry Sultan; Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History by Susan Meiselas; Man with a Movie Camera: A Global Remake by Perry Bard; The Atlas Project by Walid Raad; Gerard Richter’s Atlas; From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried by Carrie Mae Weems, The Rephotographic Project of the American West, Cory Arcangel’s Arnold Schoenberg, op. 11 - II - Cute Kittens, and various projects by Alan Berliner, Christian Boltanski, Sarah Charlesworth, Milagros de la Torre, Sanja Ivekovic, Wangechi Mutu, Alfredo Jaar, Michael Lesy, Annette Messager, Clarissa Sligh, Jo Spence, and Penelope Umbrico.

See www.afterlifeofimages.tumblr.com for more information.  Contributions are from Lorie Novak and Archive Inspired Projects Fall 2016 and Spring 2015.

This is an interdisciplinary studio course and students have full access the Photography & Imaging’s facilities. A lab fee is charged. For more information, please contact lorie.novak@nyu.edu.

Prerequisite: Photography & Imaging: Digital or permission of the department. Interested non-majors must complete the non-major request form to enroll in this course. Priority is given to DPI majors. 

This class is designed to train aspiring content creators, photographers, and journalists in the advanced production techniques and tools for producing and creating multimedia content for online editorial presentation and mobile platforms using hybrid still/video Dslr cameras, 360-degree video, advanced audio recording techniques, and virtual/augmented reality, etc. The course also addresses and familiarizes the student with the emergent landscape of new technologies in digital presentation, journalism, and storytelling using photography, video, sound, and the written word. Students will be thoroughly trained in the production tools and techniques of hybrid Dslr cameras and other recording devices, as well as the integration of content using Adobe Lightroom, Premiere, and written text. A lab fee is charged for this course.

Photography & Imaging: Analog, Digital, and Multimedia (can be taken concurrently) or Department Permission. 

Social media has put a spotlight on the idea of “the performance of self,” but this is not new in art.  The most ‘reality ’-based disciplines– performance, photography, and video have been inextricably connected for decades because there is such an inherent performative aspect to lens-related media.  This class will explore combining camera technologies (still and video) with performance. Through assignments, readings, and class discussions, we will look at various practices that include performing for the camera: social media, performance art, documentaries, political ads, and self-portraits.  This class will also address how camera technologies and performativity are the media and vehicles with the most significant potential for direct communication, deception, annoyance, disturbance, and celebration.

Photography & Imaging: Analog, Digital, and Multimedia (can be taken concurrently) or Department Permission. Interested non-majors will need to fill out the on-major request form.

By synthesizing critical discourse and material experimentation, students will explore photography as a sculptural medium, developing works that challenge the boundaries between image and object, ephemerality and permanence, and two-dimensional representation and three-dimensional space.

Students will engage with both historical and contemporary approaches to photographic objects, considering how sculptural strategies—such as volume, surface, and spatial occupation—transform visual narratives. Readings and discussions will investigate how material choices, bodily interaction, and the sensory experience of sculpture influence the perception and meaning of photographic artwork. 

Students will develop technical skills in sculptural fabrication, utilizing NYU's advanced makerspaces and campus shops with rapid prototyping tools, digital textile, laser cutting, 3D printing, alongside traditional sculptural shop and photographic processes, to create hybrid photographic-sculptural works.

The course also integrates professional practices by engaging with external vendors and campus fabrication shops.

Photography & Imaging: Analog, Digital, and Multimedia (can be taken concurrently) or Department Permission. 

This course explores the art of creating and building photographs for the camera, integrating traditional, digital, and AI-driven techniques. Students will stage complex photographic scenes using lighting, set design, costumes, models, and maquettes, while other projects incorporate digital post-production and advanced compositing to enhance in-camera compositions

Emphasis will be placed on narrative construction and storytelling through photography, exploring myth, fabrication, and pre-existing visual languages from pop culture and religion. Students will develop narratives specifically for the lens, considering the complexity of constructing imagined realities and conveying layered meaning through staged imagery. Projects will include both student-proposed and prompt-based assignments, fostering creativity and technical skill development. The course examines key artists from early pioneers like Oscar Rejlander to contemporary artist Ayana V. Jackson, alongside theoretical readings, to explore staged photography as a medium for storytelling, social critique, and conceptual exploration.

This class will attempt to demystify the questions and decisions young artists face when choosing a profession in the arts. Central to the course is understanding an artist’s creative growth and lifestyle choices are inextricably entwined with his/her financial security. Young creative professionals need to realistically assess their future goals and aspirations in order to find their niche in the worlds of both art and commerce, while supporting their larger creative vision. This class is largely a survey of the many career choices available to artists. Topics covered will be: graduate schools, careers in teaching, editorial, advertising, stock and corporate photography, art buying and photo editing, photo assisting, galleries, artist’s residencies, grants and fundraising sources, portfolio preparation and marketing resumes. The class relies heavily on guests from the publishing, business and art world, giving students the chance to show their work to, and elicit advice from, top industry professionals.

Prerequisite: Photography Analog & Digital or permission by the Department. Please note, this is a seven-week workshop. Interested non-majors must complete the non-major request form to enroll in this course.

Advanced inkjet printing and color management workshop. This course will cover fine inkjet printing techniques and color management techniques for both color and black and white printing. Topics will include profiling devices, neutralizing greys in Photoshop, correct use of paper profiles, proofing, building custom profiles, and an understanding of how lighting conditions affect print viewing. This will be a technical class, with a mix of lectures, demos, and printing sessions.

This Photoshop course explores the possibilities for image manipulation and the steps involved in learning to translate traditional darkroom skills into digital artwork and montage. Starting from the empty canvas, we look at all the basic elements of Photoshop, including selection tools, text, scale, retouching, and collage. Introducing the principles of layers and masks we will look at creating composite images from photographic images and web sources. We also cover scanning negatives and flat artwork as well as color adjustment using levels and curves. We look at all aspects of image creation and enhancement with equal importance given to the aesthetic effect and technical ease. By working on a creative project, students use the software to convey their ideas in this digital environment

Prerequisite: Open to DPI Juniors and Seniors only.

Juniors and seniors gain valuable work experience and insight into the professional world through this opportunity that bridges the academic and professional worlds. Students have been enrolled in internships at museums, art galleries, commercial photography studios, major publications and with artists. Faculty advisor Mark Jenkinson facilitates the internship placement with regard to the student's interests as well as ensures the educational propriety of the work. Credits vary according to the nature of the placement.

Students are registered by the department upon receipt of a signed Internship Agreement Form. A maximum of 6 credits total in Internship is allowed during your student career. Repeatable multiple semesters

Required of all DPI Seniors. 

In this intensive critique course, students produce their senior thesis project for exhibition in the spring

semester. Students are encouraged to use any photo-based method or approach that can best serve their individual ideas and directions. Later emphasis will be on refining and editing each project, with assistance in determining a final completed form. Critical emphasis will encourage the development of personal vision and project forms that best serve specific choices. Students will be expected to challenge themselves and each other to delve deeper with their work and take risks. On the first day of class, students must bring a past project and be prepared to present their project ideas.

Offered Fall Only. Required of all freshmen majors and highly recommended for incoming transfers. Students are required to register for the lecture and the recitation sections. No prerequisites for this course. The course will consist of a series of weekly lectures, discussions, readings and field trips to museums and galleries in the city. Lectures will present historic and contemporary art and photography and it's ideation as a basis for understanding the work the students are viewing on their weekly field trips. Students will visit selected exhibitions chosen for their quality and relevance and arranged by geographic area of the city (One week the Whitney, the next Chelsea, etc). Students will be required to monitor the daily press and periodicals for reviews of work they've seen and to highlight exhibitions the class should see. Additional readings of historic material will be assigned and short papers will be required.

This class will chronicle the history of photography's complex and symbiotic relationship to the other visual arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, installation and performance, among others. Beginning with the medium’s invention and the early fights of its practitioners to establish themselves as fine artists, the course will describe photographers? unique attempts to negotiate their relationships with both artistic movements and the media culture of which they are a part. Robinson, Cameron, Emerson, F. Holland Day, Stieglitz, Moholy-Nagy, Rodchenko, Weston, Alvarez Bravo, Lartigue, De Carava, Cahun, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus and Cindy Sherman (among others) will be seen within the context of their respective art worlds, so the impact of art movements, cultural attitudes and new technologies on photographers during different historical periods can be assessed.

This class will chronicle the history of photography's complex and symbiotic relationship to the other visual arts: painting, sculpture, architecture, installation and performance, among others. Beginning with the medium's invention and the early fights of its practitioners to establish themselves as fine artists, the course will describe photographers? unique attempts to negotiate their relationships with both artistic movements and the media culture of which they are a part. Robinson, Cameron, Emerson, F. Holland Day, Stieglitz, Moholy-Nagy, Rodchenko, Weston, Alvarez Bravo, Lartigue, De Carava, Cahun, Robert Frank, Diane Arbus and Cindy Sherman (among others) will be seen within the context of their respective art worlds, so the impact of art movements, cultural attitudes and new technologies on photographers during different historical periods can be assessed.

Prerequisites: Social or Aesthetic History of Photography (can be taken concurrently). DPI majors:  juniors and seniors only. Interested non-majors must complete the non-major request form to enroll in this course.

A writing course with the larger aim of getting students to be more critical viewers, and hence possess a more convincing voice - whether conveying, describing, analyzing, challenging, and/or critiquing what they see. In class, for the entire semester, students take on their photographer’s persona — they will give lectures about their photographer, and then more in their photographer’s voice, about what mattered to their photographer (based on assignments); they make work based on their photographers that influenced their vision. The professor would like students to go deep into someone else’s sensibility…such as Diane Arbus, Weegee, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Roy Decarava, Claude Cahun, Man Ray…  among others.

East Asia is today one of the world’s most dynamic regions, and its dramatic social and economic transformation has been mirrored in the work of a host of startlingly original and innovative visual artists. The class will explore the ideas and visual idioms that inform the leading contemporary photo artists in China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. We will begin with a historical survey of the development of photography in East Asia since the mid-19th century, but we will concentrate on the period from 1960 to the present.  Figures whose work will be explored include such Japanese artists and photographers as Daido Moriyama, Shomei Tomatsu, Miyako Ishiuchi, Yasumasa Morimura, Mariko Mori, and Daito Manabe. From China, we will examine the work of artists like Zhang Huan, Cao Fei, Yang Fudong, and Lu Yang, among others. Korean artists to be covered include Jung Yeondoo, Lim Minouk, and Moon Kyungwon & Jeon Joonho. Since many of these artists work in media art as well as photography, there will be regular video screenings and discussion of the special issues surrounding moving-image art throughout the semester.

This seminar will be a study of the complex career of French filmmaker Agnès Varda (1928-2019), one of the most celebrated and original filmmakers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Beginning as a still photographer, she explored various ways to expand the frozen image in time and space and then moved on to film. Having seen few movies and having had no education in the medium, she was nevertheless quickly recognized as one of the first and defining artists of the French New Wave by the 1950s. Focusing often on women’s issues, on social stresses embedded in the most mundane aspects of daily life, and on political problems like homelessness, global consumption and hunger, she created narratives that explored the lived experiences of characters caught in the web of history. Moving between documentary, fiction and autobiography, she demolished the barriers between these genres as well as the barriers between the public and the private, the objective and the subjective. Late in life, needing a new challenge, she moved into the visual arts – she became a “plasticienne” and created installations, sculptures, filmic tableaux and everything in between, showing her work in museums, in galleries and at festivals worldwide. This class will examine the tri-part career of this extraordinary woman, focusing on her astonishing originality, her recurring themes and the singular creative vision that managed, in spite of the diversity of her work, to breathe life into everything that she did.

Prerequisites: Social and Aesthetic History of Photography.

Digital technology today allows the combination of still images and moving images with unprecedented ease. As a result, the boundaries that once existed between still photographers, filmmakers, and videomakers are becoming increasingly blurred. By examining a wide range of visual materials, both historic and contemporary, this class will attempt to understand the changing relation between the still photographic image and the moving image. We will concentrate on three major areas:

1.     We will examine the rarely seen films made by celebrated still photographers such as Paul Strand, Man Ray, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Robert Frank, William Klein, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Helen Levitt, and Susan Meiselas.

2.     We will consider a number of classic films and videos that make innovative use of the still photograph, the freeze-frame image, and the static camera. These filmmakers include Dziga Vertov, Agnès Varda, Jean-Luc Godard, Federico Fellini, Andy Warhol, Chris Marker, Hollis Frampton, Bill Viola, and James Benning.

3.     We will discuss a selected group of contemporary artists whose work imaginatively embraces both still photographs and moving images. These artists include Isaac Julian, Douglas Gordon, Lorna Simpson, Stan Douglas, Eyal Sivan, Tracey Moffat, and David Claerbout.

Throughout the class, we will explore an unusually wide range of visual materials: still photographs, photo books, feature films, avant-garde films, documentaries, and artists' films and videos. Class readings will introduce a range of critical approaches to the relation between the still and moving image, and will also highlight key works and visual innovators.

Christopher Phillips is the curator at the International Center of Photography, New York. He has formerly been senior editor at Art in America. He was also the curator of the 1998-99 traveling exhibition Voices at Witte de With, Rotterdam; Fundacio Miro, Barcelona; and Le Fresnoy, Tourcoing, France as well as the co-editor of the exhibition catalogue, published by Witte de With, Rotterdam. Christopher was also the author of Steichen at War (1981); coauthor of The New Vision: Photography Between the World Wars (1989); and editor of Photography in the Modern Era: Documents and Critical Writings(1989). He has had articles published in October, Art in America, Guggenheim Magazine, and Plaszm. He was part of the curatorial team that organized the exhibition Cosmos: From Romanticism to the Avant-Garde at Musee des Beaux-Arts, Montreal and which also traveled to Barcelona and Venice. Christopher has also published an article on the Viennese electronic art group, Granular Synthesis ("Machine Dreams," Art in America Nov. 1999) and a report on the Istanbul Biennial ("Band of Outsiders," Art in America, Apr. 2000).

Drawing inspiration from contemporary art, artistic practices and the potential of the curatorial role, this advanced seminar engages a broad range of innovative forms of exhibition-making. We explore the fluid role of the curator in shaping relationships among artists, artworks, institutions, exhibition spaces, and audiences, as well as “the exhibition” as the preeminent forum for presenting, engaging, and analyzing artistic developments. Discussions center on specific venues/contexts for presenting art and revolve around the analysis of critical readings and case studies as well as regular visits to current exhibitions. Final projects are comprised of a written exhibition proposal and a digitally curated component. Guest speakers will also visit our class from time to time. Contemporary art and visual culture emphasis will be placed on photography as well as related media and technology where possible.

Prerequisites: Social or Aesthetic History of Photography (can be taken concurrently). DPI majors:  juniors and seniors only. Interested non-majors must complete the non-major request form to enroll in this course.

The central concern of the course ​“Decolonizing Vision” is to explore the ways in which racial, imperial, and settler colonial regimes of power instantiate regimes of vision that determine what we see, how we see, and how we are seen. We will consider how the legitimacy and authority to rule and regulate particular populations has been inextricably linked to the concomitant power to visually survey these populations and the landscapes they inhabit. We will explore how colonial modernity’s abiding legacy is the institution of a way of seeing, and hence knowing, that obscures the intimacies of imperial, racial, and settler colonial projects as they produce racial, gendered, and sexual subjectivities.  The course “Decolonizing Vision” places black diasporic visual culture and its engagement with the histories of transatlantic slavery in the Americas in relation to the intertwined histories of US and European projects of empire and settler colonial conquest in Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Middle East. Most importantly, we identify “decolonial visual practices” that speak to these submerged, co-mingled histories, and that point to their continuing resonance in the present. Through a sustained examination of queer, black, and feminist decolonial visual practices in particular, this course seeks to explore alternative ways of both seeing and knowing capable of challenging the scopic and sensorial regimes of colonial modernity and its afterlives. The scope of this class spans multiple geographic areas, historical periods, and genres.

This critical studies course examines the uneasy entanglement between artificial intelligence and the photographic imagination. As AI functions both as a mirror and an amplifier of systemic inequities, it raises urgent questions about artistic authorship, agency, and the politics of vision. Students will engage the ethical and political dimensions of data mining, algorithmic bias, and machine learning—how these systems consolidate power, distort representation, and exert structural control over creativity and perception.

Alongside critique, the course explores AI’s generative potential: its ability to reimagine lost or silenced histories, repair gaps within the archive, and expand visual representation beyond inherited norms. Through artworks and writings that feed the “black box” not as acts of submission but of intervention, we will consider an emerging movement of creative thinkers using AI to imagine more inclusive, justice-oriented futures for image-making and collective perception. Students will also shape the course through student-led topics, with an open-ended syllabus that evolves in response to discussion and discovery.

A performance-based workshop that blends critical study and practice to explore the idea of open-ended performance as a strategy for engagement. Performance emerged as a strategy of resistance against established conventions in art. From the first impulse towards emphatic presence and lived experience in Futurist seratas to Kaprow’s happenings, performance developed in opposition to establishment impulses. For many artists working in performance, the goal was to explore methods to provoke their audience from passive spectatorship to active participation in order to create the possibility of social change. While performance brought art discourse closer to the realm of everyday life, it also established and retained its own one-directional hierarchy between the performer and the audience. Artists began to actively explore their bodies in space and play with experience as an artistic medium, even though audiences remained passively engaged spectators. Philosopher and historian Susan Buck-Morss writes about the distinction between one-way and two-way channels of communication in relation to the feedback between artists and their viewers. In a one-way channel, artists enact a performance for a passive audience. While the platform of action has moved from the theater stage to public and social spaces, the dynamic of its hierarchy is largely intact. In Encounters, artists begin to dismantle this hierarchy into a two-way feedback loop, activating viewer engagement in performances and activities that trigger their participation in order for the performance to develop. This two-way channel expands audience engagement in a participatory loop that collectively develops the performance

This advanced seminar is about the power of representation. It explores the broad concept of “identity” as it manifests visually across different platforms, including photography, film/video, various media, immersive technology and social media. It investigates both the live and virtual spaces in which varied concepts of “identity” are constructed, enacted, performed, reinforced, appropriated, critiqued, resisted and dismantled. Examining the often overlapping constructions of race, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, ethnicity, religion, and class, among others, #ID will draw on case studies and guest speakers to critically examine these aspects as they have persisted both past and present. Course topics focus primarily on U.S. contexts and are intended to establish a general foundation but do also consider “the global” as well. The aim is to open up new avenues for critically thinking about, visualizing and engaging with the world and those who live within it.

This course explores the history of photography as a medium for articulating, documenting, and reimagining queer identity and experience. For over a century, artists have turned to photography to register the complexities of gender, sexuality, and desire, developing visual languages that challenged or exceeded limited verbal vocabularies. Beginning with early European photographers like Wilhelm von Gloeden and Claude Cahun, who explored homoeroticism and gender fluidity, we trace how photography became crucial for queer self-representation and community formation. By the 1980s, artists including Nan Goldin, Peter Hujar, Sunil Gupta, and Rotimi Fani-Kayode used the medium to document their communities and assert queer visibility amid social erasure and the AIDS crisis.

 In response to history’s failure to preserve queer narratives, various queer photographers have used the medium to create imaginary or fictionalized archives to fill in historical gaps. We’ll examine documentary practices that create counter-archives of marginalized lives, staged images challenging photographic "truth," appropriation and re-reading of historical photographs; and speculative work imagining queer pasts and futures. Throughout this course, we'll consider how photography's capacity for intimacy, surveillance, and preservation has shaped queer visual culture. Weekly readings combining art history and queer theory will help students develop critical frameworks for analyzing photography's relationship to gender, sexuality, race, class, and disability. Students will practice close visual analysis of photographic work from the 1890s to the present, engage in weekly discussions, and deliver presentations on selected photographers.

This course will provide an overview of the development of the documentary impulse in a wide range of visual media, including photography, photo books, film, and video, as well as more recent digital and web-based forms. Course readings will explore the key concepts and principles that have defined the leading documentary approaches. We will pay special attention to the ways in which documentary practices have been continuously shaped and reshaped by debates concerning ethics, esthetics, politics, and social vision. The course will trace the development of the main documentary genres. We will become familiar with the works of influential documentary photographers--such as Thomas Annan, Jacob Riis, Lewis Hine, Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Susan Meiselas, and Gilles Peress--and documentary filmmakers such as Robert Flaherty, John Grierson, Dziga Vertov, D.A., Pennebaker, Agnes Varda, Wang Bing, Errol Morris, and Joshua Oppenheimer. 

The course will highlight the growing prominence, in the 21st century, of experimental documentary approaches that intentionally blur the line between fact and fiction—for example, by staging reenactments of past events as a way to bring viewers closer to the participants’ experience of those events. Finally, we will see how documentary forms have been utilized by a number of innovative contemporary artists--such as Fiona Tan, Allan Sekula, Hito Steyerl, Carrie Mae Weems, Walid Raad, and Rabih Mroue—to create new means of grasping the social realities of a media-saturated world.

This course focuses on both the present and the future as shaped by the work, practices and perspectives of professionals and creatives working across visual culture. Invited guests comprise artists, curators, scholars, designers, editors, journalists, and others from a range of fields including contemporary art, technology, commercial advertising, fashion, editorial, documentary and photo-journalism. A strong focus will be placed on those working within technology and the digital realm. Guests will speak about their own work and process while assessing and exploring their position on the current and future state of image-making and visuals. Emphasis will be placed on practical applicability of ideas and career readiness. Required readings as noted. *NOTE: Select field trips/exhibition visits may be assigned.