Unit 3 – From Behind the Lens
Rough draft of Analysis due Friday, Oct. 30
Rough draft of Photo Captioning due Friday, Nov. 6
Our third unit will focus on photography, on ways we see through the lens of the photographer, whether the photographer be yourself, those in the media, or professional photographers. We will look at images from flickr and deviantart.com as well as professional photography and film. While we spend time looking, it will be your job to think critically and rhetorically about how these images shape the ways we see the world we live in and write about these ways.
Your first paper will be a visual analysis of a piece of photography or film you choose. It can be professional or amateur, advertisements from magazines, a photo taken by your roommate, or a newspaper photo, a documentary or a Hollywood flick—anything is fine. However, you will want to choose carefully: while some photos and films may be pretty or nice to look at or fun to watch, they may be less rich in rhetoric. You will want to think rhetorically about the picture and how it shapes our perspectives, as is the theme of this course.
Some issues you might consider addressing as you analyze:
Violence, gratuitous or otherwise
Photoshopping/remixing – when is it okay?
Elements of photography or film
Political agendas
Gender or race issues
The second thing you will write for this unit is a Photo Captioning essay. This will be explained in more detail in class, but again choosing a good photo is essential. Here you will not analyze what we see in the photo; rather, you will write about what we don’t see. If you like, you may do your PC essay on the same image you analyzed.
Things to Consider About Publishing
While you may think this offers no chance for publication, the truth is there are several options. You could critique a movie and do a movie review (which are easily published on imdb.com—but it should be a recent film). You could review a photographer’s work online and comment on their blog. You could do something more extensive like start a facebook group linked to specific image awareness issues. There are many options here. Or, if you’re feeling the urge to write something more traditional, consider an academic journal in the field of composition, communications, or computers that might give you a chance to build a more academic argument.