History of Photography

The course intends:
- presenting to students pivotal trends of photography from origin to second half of Twentieth-Century, by comparing constantly it with other visual arts;
- giving to students methodological tools useful for a critical and philological research on photography, in order to understand specific features, affinities and differences to other medium;
- focusing on specific topics: analysis of "documentation" and "artistic creation" in photograpy;
- studying critical and theoretical sources as well as methods for history of photography, and institutions for preserving and promoting photographic heritage.

Expected learning outcomes (nuovo testo da inserire in W4)
- explain the main trends of photography in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century, focusing on different technical features, approaches and tendencies, and also on the most significant photographers, since the origins to "modernity", by comparing photography with other contemporary visual arts;
- analyze photos (technic, form, style), according to the specific cultural and historic context and by using an historic or critical method;
- apply different theoretical approaches and methods, getting a specific historiographical methodology to study photography as specific medium as well as within other visual arts.