GLOBAL LONG-FORM PHOTOGRAPHY

How have artists been informed and influenced by the natural world? This course will examine how photography and literature have responded to nature, ecology, and the environment. We will explore how close-looking might inform an artist’s practice regarding the living environment - its bounty - and its degradation. Students will study works whose makers have seen art as a form of praise of the natural world, as well as those who investigate the relationship between art and environmental activism. Readings will include those by John Muir, Rachel Carson, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Carl Jung, Robert Macfarlane, Mary Oliver, Kerri ni Dochartaigh and others. Particular emphasis will be placed on how photography over the past hundred years has responded to shrinking natural landscapes, environmental destruction, and global warming. We will study in-depth photographic essays by some of the following artists: Robert Adams; Rene Effendi; Kikuji Kawada; Dornith Doherty; Kirk Crippens and Gretchen Le Maistre; Brad Tempkin; Pablo Lopez Luz; Mandy Barker; Robert Zhoa Renhui, Masahisa Fukashe, and Meghann Riepenhoff. Students will be required to write response papers weekly, participate in weekly discussions, and produce a term-long photographic essay.