ARTH 387 Issues in Art and Criticism: The Photo-filmic Image

• Wednesdays, 2:45pm-5:15pm
• EV-1.615
• Instructor: Dr. John Di Stefano

The way we see and understand photographic and filmic images has evolved significantly since the invention of the camera. Today we stand somewhere between the immediacy of our portable screens and a growing uncertainty about the authority and veracity of the photo-filmic image itself. This is due in part to the rapid development of imaging technologies, and the cultural, historical and socio-political contexts that frame it. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the global arena of contemporary art where the unique relationship between the still- and the moving-image is in constant evolution. This course examines key critical, theoretical and aesthetic issues that shape the influential role of the photographic and the filmic image on visual culture, and their complex associations with history, memory, experience and identity. Topics include: ontologies of photography, film and video; notions of time and duration; spatializing of the image; and slowness & stillness in contemporary art discourse.