Studio Description

RMIT University | Bachelor of Communication – Media

COMM2626 Media 3 + COMM2628 Media 5

Semester 1 | 2018

Studio Leader: Brian Morris

 

‘A knowledge of photography is just as important as that of the alphabet. The illiterate of the future will be ignorant of the use of the camera and pen alike.’
-László Moholy-Nagy. ‘From Pigment to Light’, Telebar Vol.1-2, 1923

Studio Prompt
How do practical and conceptual ‘uses of photography’ matter to us as contemporary media practitioners?

Description
What is a photograph now? What are some of the diverse uses to which photographs are put by both professional and non-professional image-makers in our visually-saturated cultures? How might reflexive literacies around the still image be useful for your media practice regardless of whether you aspire to be a film and television maker, social media producer, cultural critic or radio practitioner?
This studio explores these questions through repeated cycles of making, looking at, reading, thinking and talking about a range of different kinds of photography that might include portraiture, street photography, social media forms, production stills, studio-based, ethnography/documentary, expanded photography and fine art. ‘Photography’ here is used as a descriptor for diverse technologies and practices based around communicating with light. It’s a prism for interrogating the role of visual culture in our lives. It is also a practice that changes things in the world: be it perceptions, attitudes, social relations or everyday activities.
Moholy-Nagy’s observation about the importance of photographic literacy still holds water 80 years after it was made – but it needs re-examining in the radically different context of digital and distributed online media. Today, influential pre-digital ideas about how we ‘read’ and culturally incorporate photography in our lives jostle alongside newer theories that have emerged in the internet era. Contemporary photography needs to take account of fundamental changes in technologies, practices and contexts that have destabilized the very idea of ‘the photograph’ and photography as a practice. That uncertainty figures as a lament for some and a creative opportunity for others.
So what professional, popular and academic literacies inform your uses of photography and how might these be expanded in order to enhance your broader media practice?

Studio Aims

-To improve and develop your production and post-production photography skills
-To expand your literacy around photography as a practice and form that has been reshaped in the digital era
-To investigate the usefulness of photography in enhancing your own visual media practice

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