For general guidance about what is expected in your essays for this module,
see the
general criteria.
Please remember to avoid footnotes and to include an
alphabetical list of 'References' which have been cited in the text
(not a Bibliography of anything you have read for the essay). This list should include
author's names, date, book titles (in italics), place of publication and publisher.
Within the text always cite author's surname, date and page number. Double-space your
text and number your pages. For more detailed notes on writing essays in this
department, click
here.
Advice for this particular assignment: We have often alluded to this, so check the lecture slides.
There are various ways in which a snapshot can look unreal. For instance:
- Snapshots of friends and celebrities sometimes don't seem like 'good likenesses'.
- Action shots (especially in sports journalism) sometimes freeze the body in very strange positions.
- 'There is nothing like a camera to make a molehill out of a mountain' (anon.).
- Snapshots of tall buildings exhibit a disturbingly pronounced convergence of the vertical lines.
- We are not normally conscious of 'motion blur'.
Account for why such images seem at odds with our expectations, drawing in particular on any relevant concepts
covered in the lectures and the arguments of relevant academic specialists. You could even return to the
issue of the reaction of artists to Eadweard Muybridge's photographs demonstrating that some of the time
all four legs of a galloping horse are off the ground (see Arnheim 1966 and Gombrich 1964): some argued
that the photographs were unreal because they showed things in a way that the unaided human eye never sees them
and that such photographs demonstrated the superiority of painting and drawing over photography in
reflecting phenomenal reality.
Note also that this is an assignment for which the
inclusion of relevant pictorial illustrations is expected: these should be
incorporated electronically rather than literally cut-and-pasted and should be labelled 'Figure 1...'
(etc.).
Some suggested reading
- Akeret, Robert U. (2000)
Photolanguage: How Photos Reveal the Fascinating Stories of Our Lives and Relationships. New York: Norton
- Alvarado, Manuel, Edward Buscombe & Richard Collins (Eds) (2001)
Representation and Photography: A Screen Education Reader. Basingstoke: Palgrave
- Arnheim, Rudolf (1966)
Toward a Psychology of Art: Collected Essays. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press
- Becker, H. S. (Ed.) (1981)
Exploring Society Photographically.
Chicago: Chicago University Press
- Berger, John (1972)
Ways of Seeing. Harmondsworth: Penguin/London: BBC
- Berger, John (1980)
About Looking. London: Writers & Readers
- Berger, John (1982)
'Appearances'. In John Berger & Jean Mohr
Another Way of Telling. Cambridge: Granta/Harmondsworth: Penguin, pp. 81-129
- Berger, John (2013)
Understanding a Photograph. London: Penguin
- Bolton, Richard (Ed.) (1989)
The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
- Burgin, Victor (Ed.) (1982)
Thinking Photography. London: Macmillan
- Chalfen, R. (1987)
Snapshot Versions of Life. Bowling Green, OH:
Bowling Green State University Popular Press
- Chandler, Daniel (2001/2007)
Semiotics: The Basics. London: Routledge
- Clarke, Graham (1997)
The Photograph. Oxford: Oxford University Press
- Deregowski, Jan B. (1980)
Illusions, Patterns and Pictures: A Cross-Cultural Perspective.
London: Academic Press
- Evans, Harold (1978)
Pictures on a Page: Photo-journalism, Graphics and Picture-Editing. London: Heinemann
- Feininger, Andreas (1974)
Photographic Seeing. London:
Thames & Hudson; extract 'Differences in 'Seeing' Between Eye and Lens'
[WWW document] URL
http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Modules/MC10220/feininger.html
- Goldberg, Vicki (1991)
The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives. New York: Abbeville Press
- Gombrich, Ernst H. (1964)
'Moment and Movement in Art', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 27: 293-306
- Gombrich, Ernst H. (1977)
Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. London: Phaidon
- Gombrich, Ernst H (1982)
The Image and the Eye: Further Studies in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. London: Phaidon [recommended for this essay]
- Gombrich, Ernst H (1984)
The Sense of Order: A Study in the Psychology of Decorative Art. London: Phaidon.
- Gregory, Richard L. (1970)
The Intelligent Eye. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson
- Gregory, Richard (1998)
Eye and Brain: The Psychology of Seeing. Oxford: Oxford University Press [recommended for this essay]
- Hirsch, J. (1981)
Family Photographs: Content, Meaning and Effect.
New York: Oxford University Press
- King, G. (1984)
"Say Cheese!" Looking at Snapshots in a New Way.
New York: Dodd, Mead
- Mitchell, W. J. T. (1994)
Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press (Chapter 9: 'The Photographic Essay: Four Case Studies', pp. 281-322)
- Nichols, Bill (1981)
Ideology and the Image. Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press (Chapters 1 & 2)
- Pateman, Trevor (1991)
'Remarks on the Nature of Photography';
Revised from the essay 'Photography' appearing in Trevor Pateman (1991)
Key Concepts. A Guide to Aesthetics, Criticism and the Arts in Education. London, Falmer Press, pp. 138-40
- Rudisill, Richard (1982) 'On Reading Photographs',
Journal of American Culture 5(3)
- Sanders, Noel (1988) 'Angles on the Image'. In Gunther Kress (Ed.)
Communication and Culture. Kensington, NSW: New South Wales
University Press, pp. 131-56
- Scott, Clive (1999)
The Spoken Image: Photography and Language. London: Reaktion
- Snyder, Joel & Neil Walsh Allen (1975) 'Photography, Vision and Representation', Critical Inquiry 2(1): 143-169.
Reprinted in: Thomas F Barrow, Shelley Armitage & William E Tydeman (Eds) (1982)
Reading into Photography: Selected Essays, 1959-1980. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, pp. 61-91; and
Philip Alperson (Ed) (1992)
The Philosophy of the Visual Arts.
New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 289-305.
- Sontag, Susan (1979)
On Photography. Harmondsworth: Penguin
- Trachtenberg, Alan (Ed) (1980)
Classic Essays on Photography. New Haven, CT: Leete's Island Books
- Walden, Scott (Ed.) (2010)
Photography and Philosophy: Essays on the Pencil of Nature. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell
- Wells, Liz (Ed.) (1997)
Photography: A Critical Introduction.
London: Routledge
- Wells, Liz (Ed) (2003)
The Photography Reader. London: Routledge
Note: Treat with extreme caution sources labelled with this symbol!