Life according to "Life" 4219-SA047

This course will cover the most important events and phenomena in the the United States between the 1930s and the 1970s (and beyond, if possible) as seen by the Life Magazine. During its 36 years of existence Life became one of the most successful, widely read and influential magazines especially among its targeted white middle class audience. Although Life was largely inspired by Italian, French and German picture magazines it managed to create a successful combination of a picture magazine and newsmagazine.

The course will dwell on news and events in the United States from two perspectives. One will concentrate on American social and political life - individual people and their stories, pivotal moments in American history, problems of race, domestic and international conflicts, etc. visualized by Life photographers. The other will be more theoretical placing Life in the field of journalism, photojournalism, communications to present magazine’s contribution to twentieth-century visual culture.

Life’s photography reflected well the anxieties and contradictions about national identity in the United States that emerged from the upheaval of World War II. At the same time it carried the notion of American messianism, capitalism and fear of communism. The course will therefore deepen the understanding of images creating visual narratives of political or social events and telling the stories, not illustrating them.

The methodology of the course will contain a combination of social and political history of the United States, photojournalism and criticism and socio-semiotics. The literature to the course will be provided by the instructor, the magazine is available in full from Google Books. The course is intended for students interested in social history of the United States, photography and visual story telling.

Among others, we will focus on the following topics:

1. The basics of photojournalism. Composition and its rules. The invention of the magazine and the European picture magazines
2. "Life" and its features. "Life" vs. "Look"
3. The photoessay. W. Eugene Smith, Country Doctor, Nurse Midwife
4. Documentary. Farm Security Administration. Photographing poverty and social crisis
5. Photographing war
6. Photographing the Cold War
7. Photographing race
8. "Life's" Political Aesthetics
9. "Life" and the middle class lifestyle.
10. The Iconic Photographs - analysis of selected pictures and their authors
11. Photographing space and the space race.
12. "Life" and life in a big city.
13. Life's photographers - Gordon Parks
14. Life photographers - Margaret Bourke White
15. Life photographers - Robert Capa

Type of course

elective courses

Prerequisites (description)

*to present American social life between 1936 - 1972 * to discuss the history of the magazine, major problems of American social life, the great Depression, poverty, wars, racial conflicts, the Cold War, political developments, life in the city or in the country; * to analyse the methods of visualisation of the above problems, the contexts of the photoessays dovoted to the pbroblems, its structure and the author * to analyse single shots reflecting American values, photogrpaphs that became a part of American cultural heritage.

Course coordinators

Włodzimierz Batóg

Learning outcomes

The objective of this course is to teach students to serach for knowledge and interpret it on the basis of widely understood photographic sources.

Students will:

1. gain knowledge on various forms of documenting the past

2. be able to understand the interconnections between various socio - cultural phenomena in the USA and the methods of their visualisation

3. note and understand the importance of the context for the photographic sources, the process of its creation and the intended effect

Additionally, students will:

1. be able to explain the meaning of a particular photographic source for US social and political history

2. be able to formulate conclusions and evaluations coming out of it

3. be prepared to seek and search for information on the events covered by "Life"

4. posses advanced skills of interdisciplinary analysis to present and analyse the developments in the United States.

Finally, students will gain experience in conducting research and communicating the results of that research in clear, English prose.

Assessment criteria

A 1,500-word paper as a minimum requirement to complete this course. The topics will assigned by the instructor and will be rather analytical than descriptive. Students will also be requested to present on an assignet topic. Active participation is highly recommended. Attending the course is also obligatory. The paper and attending constitutes 51% of your final grade and essentially means "pass". To get a higher grade, your paper should be excellently written, reserached and impressive (requirements will be provided later); additionally your oral presentation and active participation in class discussions will add the remaining 49%.

Bibliography

Life Magazine, available from Google Books in full, is the main source for this course. Additionally, selected chapters from the following accounts will be provided:

1. Katherine Bussard, Kristen Gresh, Life Magazine and the power of photography
2. Glenn G. Willumson, W. Eugene Smith and the photographic essay
3. Thierry Gervais, The Making of Visual News. A history of photography in the press
4. Martin Berger, Seeing through race. A reinterpretation of Civil Rights photography
5. Liz Weels, Photography. A critical intruduction
6. Helen Caple, Photography. A social semiotic approach.
7. Maitland Edey, Great photographic essays from Life

Additional information

Additional information (registration calendar, class conductors, localization and schedules of classes), might be available in the USOSweb system:

Description of 4219-SA047 in USOSweb