Assignments: Batch One: Assignment Three

Why do snapshots sometimes seem unreal?

Guidance

For general guidance about what is expected in your essays for this module, see the general criteria.

What Key Features Do I Look For?

  • Familiarity with relevant texts
  • Evidence - the stronger the better
  • Argument - coherent and balanced
  • Theoretical discussion - relation to relevant theories
  • Understanding of relevant concepts
  • Reflexivity - reflections on methodology
  • Examples - insightfully analysed
  • Style - readability and effective presentation

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:

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

Note: Treat with extreme caution sources labelled with this symbol!


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