Grad Seminar: Show and Tell

Open to students in the Art School only.

Since the inception of photography, exhibition
spaces have played an important role for the
medium. Photographic exhibitions initially were
used to present technical accomplishments and
changing parameters of the physical medium, but
the effect of these early shows was formative for
discourse about "photography." Making first an
argument for photography as art, the exhibitions
soon developed their "own" set of possibilities.

This seminar will look at the history of
exhibitions that included photography such as in
propaganda, or early Modernisms, and track how
photography as a creative discourse entered the
space of the museum. It will look at shows that
were mastered by curators with a very specific
agenda and discourse in mind, as well as later
exhibitions by individual photographers and
artists.

The course will be conducted as a seminar,
resting on the existing photographic
documentation of the exhibitions. Starting with a
close reading of the documentary material and the
arrangements of the images in space, the seminar
will expand towards the ideas, discourses and
theoretical placements that were made through and
in the exhibitions. The seminar's intention is to
help understand contemporary presentation modes
of photographic practices and to create a
critical reading of them in relation to their
predecessors.