Dear Students,

I am looking forward to seeing you tomorrow evening at the Brooklyn Museum! Remember to be on the lookout for any photographs that catch your eye and that seem useful to think about alongside Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida.

Speaking of Camera Lucida — you should be working on your reading for our next in-class meeting, on 9/25 (or 9/27, if you are attending the pre-arranged make-up class). At our last meeting, I suggested breaking the text up into manageable chunks:

  • pp. 1-21: Barthes poses questions, without settling on answers
  • pp. 22-60: Barthes poses some answers. As you read, mentally (or in writing) answer the following: what does he mean by punctum? What does he mean by studium? What aspects of a photograph do these terms name?
  • pp. 63-end: Barthes reflects on photography, death, and time.

Later this week, I’ll send out reminders about the (optional, but strongly encouraged) gallery crawl next Tuesday (9/18), and about Blog post #2 (which requires you to go to a gallery or galleries, no matter what–the gallery crawl is designed to help you do this). For those of you raring to get a head start, though, here is the Chelsea gallery map that I promised.

Remember to update the class map, as well, when you visit your galleries and public artworks!

See you soon,

Prof Kolb