'Photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are' (Susan Sontag). Illustrate with examples how photographs can be seen as involving the photographer's interpretation of the world.

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: You are expected to show that you are not naive about photography as simply a 'recording' of reality: representational conventions are involved. Do not confine yourself to 'photography as art'. This is not a Visual Art essay. Consider the factors covered in the lectures on visual perception: in particular selectivity and purposes. Focus on the ways in which photographs can be seen as interpretations of the world. The focus here is not on the interpretation of the photograph by the viewer but on the interpretation of the world by the photographer, editor etc. Consider a variety of kinds of photography (such as snapshots, ads and photojournalism) and offer some specific examples. Note that these are conventional genres, and that these conventions exert an influence. If you take photographs yourself, why not use this skill to illustrate some of your points? Compare several very different photographs of the same person or the same event (especially by different people). Consider such factors as different lighting, different lenses, different angles, different distances and different cropping. Do not get sidetracked into a discussion of the manipulation of photographic images in deliberately faked photographs.

The best essays demonstrate appropriate critical reading of academic sources. Show that you are aware of different viewpoints and try to map out the areas of agreement and disagreement. Do not simply present the claims of academic authors as if they were indisputable. Where different authors disagree, compare their arguments and evaluate the evidence they offer. What evidence or examples can you find to support or challenge particular claims?

Note also that this is an assignment for which the inclusion of relevant pictorial illustrations is essential.

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
• Barry, Ann Marie Seward (1997) Visual Intelligence: Perception, Image and Manipulation in Visual Communication. New York: State University of New York Press
  
• Barthes, Roland (1977) Image-Music-Text. London: Fontana ('The Photographic Image' and 'Rhetoric of the Image')
  
• Barthes, Roland (1982) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. London: Cape [Here, Barthes revises his earlier claim that the photograph was a 'message without a code']
  
• Becker, H S (Ed.) (1981) Exploring Society Photographically. Chicago: Chicago University Press
  
• Benjamin, Walter (1970 [1935]) 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction'. In Illuminations (Ed. Hannah Arendt; trans. Harry Zohn). London: Cape
  
• 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 (1997) 'Visual Perception: Individual Differences, Purposes and Needs'. [WWW document] URL http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Modules/MC10220/visper04.html [remember not to cite lecture notes]
• Chandler, Daniel (1998): 'Notes on "the Gaze"'. [WWW document] URL http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Documents/short/gaze.html
  
• Chandler, Daniel (2001/2007) Semiotics: The Basics. London: Routledge
• Clarke, Graham (1997) The Photograph. Oxford: Oxford University Press
  
• Edwards, Sue (1998) 'Photographs as an Interpretation of the World' [WWW document] URL http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Modules/Students/sse701.html [this is a student essay and should not be cited]
• Elkins, James (Ed) (2007) Photography Theory. London: Routledge
• 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
• Fiske, John (1990) Introduction to Communication Studies. London: Routledge.
• Goffman, Erving (1979) Gender Advertisements. New York: Harper & Row/London: Macmillan
  
• Goldberg, Vicki (1991) The Power of Photography: How Photographs Changed Our Lives. New York: Abbeville Press
  
• Gombrich, Ernst H (1977) Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. London: Phaidon
  
• Hall, Stuart (1981): 'The Determinations of News Photographs'. In Stanley Cohen & Jock Young (Eds.) (1981) The Manufacture of News: Social Problems, Deviance and the Mass Media. London: Constable, pp. 236-243
  
• 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
  
• Kress, Gunther & Theo Van Leeuwen (1996) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge
  
• Lutz, Catherine & Jane Collins (1994) 'The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes: The Example of National Geographic'. In Taylor (Ed.), op. cit., 363-84
  
• Messaris, Paul (1997) Visual Persuasion: The Role of Images in Advertising. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
  
• 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.
• Sobieszek, Robert A (1988) The Art of Persuasion: A History of Advertising Photography. New York: Harry N Abrams
• Sontag, Susan (1979) On Photography. Harmondsworth: Penguin
  
• Spence, Jo (1986) Putting Myself in the Picture. London: Camden Press
  
• Spence, Jo & Patricia Holland (Eds) (1991) Family Snaps: The Meanings of Domestic Photography. London: Virago
• Tagg, John (1988) The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories. Basingstoke: Macmillan
  
• Taylor, Lucien (Ed.) (1994) Visualizing Theory. New York: Routledge
  
• Trachtenberg, Alan (Ed) (1980) Classic Essays on Photography. New Haven, CT: Leete's Island Books
• Wagner, J (Ed.) (1979) Images of Information: Still Photography in the Social Sciences. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage
  
• 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
• Ziller, Robert (1990) Photographing the Self. Newbury Park, CA: Sage