Modernist Photography and Literature

This seminar explores intersections of the fields of “photography” and “literature” in the 20th century. We will first examine the interpretive demands of the photograph, reading a number of classic theoretical texts (Benjamin, Kracauer, Barthes). Subsequent topics will include: photography and modernism in New York and Mexico City (Stieglitz, Scheeler, Williams, Stein, O’Keefe; Bravo, Modotti, Weston, Lawrence); photography and avantgarde (Dada and Surrealism: Hausmann, Höch, Heartfield, Man Ray, Breton); the New Photography in Weimar Germany (Sander, Renger-Patzsch, Moholy-Nagy); and the modernist photobook (Foto-Auge, Evans, Frank).