Inventing Photography: History, Alchemy, and Practice

This course is a history of photography tied to practice and designed to provide a deeper understanding of the medium's historic timeline through engagement with physical processes. Students will be introduced to the practices involving chemistry and optics that drove the development of multiple types of imagery retrospectively known as "photography." The emphasis will be on materiality and photographs as socially salient objects. Students will create their own visual statements and may mix hand-made processes with modern intermediaries such as digital negatives for hand-applied emulsions or scanning negatives and printing digitally.