Photography is a two-year program of study admitting nine students a year. Darkroom, studio, and computer facilities are provided. Students receive technical instruction in black-and-white and color photography as well as nonsilver processes and digital image production.
The program is committed to a broad definition of photography as a lens-based medium open to a variety of expressive means. Students work both individually and in groups with faculty and visiting artists. In addition, a critique panel composed of faculty and other artists or critics meets weekly, as well as for a final review each term, to discuss student work.
All students are required to successfully complete two academic courses in the University before they receive their degree. In addition, first-year students are required to take two terms of Photography 828 and, in the first term, ART 949a, Critical Practice.
Fall term courses have an ‘a’ suffix and spring term courses are indicated by a ‘b’ suffix.
Click on course number for information.
An introductory course in black-and-white analog photography concentrating on the use of 35mm cameras. Topics include the “lens-less” techniques of photograms and pinhole photography; fundamental printing procedures; and the principles of film exposure and development. Assignments encourage the variety of picture-forms that 35mm cameras can uniquely generate. Student work is discussed in regular critiques. Readings examine the invention of photography and the “flaneur” tradition of small-camera photography as exemplified in the work of artists such as Henri Cartier- Bresson, Helen Levitt, Robert Frank, and Garry Winogrand. Enrollment limited. Materials fee: $150.
An introductory course in the exploration of the transition of photographic processes and techniques into digital formats. A range of tools is presented, including scanning, digital cameras, retouching, color correction, basic composition, and ink-jet printing. Students produce original work throughout the technical component of the class. After mastering the basics, students work toward the completion of a final project, and remaining classes focus on critiques. Throughout the term, lectures and presentations raise critical issues concerning the impact of digital applications and by-products on the medium of photography. Enrollment limited. Materials fee: $150.
A course in black-and-white photography extending the concerns of ART 136a or b. Students are introduced to the use of medium-format cameras and instructed in specialized topics such as night photography, the use of flash, and the manipulation of roll film; later in the term they learn basic digital scanning and grayscale printing techniques and explore the use of color in their photographs. Student work is discussed in regular critiques, supplemented by lectures and readings that consider the rich tradition of handheld photography and the production of artists such as George Brassaï, Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander, and Robert Adams. Enrollment limited. Materials fee: $150. Prerequisite: ART 136a or b or equivalent.
Exploration of both the technical and conceptual aspects of digital photography. A range of tools is used, including advanced film scanning, working with RAW files, masks, compositing and grayscale, and color ink-jet printing. Students produce original work, with special attention to ways in which their technical decisions can clarify their artistic intentions. Materials fee: $150. Prerequisite: ART 138a or b.
A course for experienced photography students to become more deeply involved with the important technical aspects of the medium, including a concentrated study of operations required in the use of view cameras, added lighting, and advanced printing techniques. Scanning and printing of negatives are included. Student work is discussed in regular critiques. Review of significant historic photographic traditions is covered. Students are encouraged to employ any previous digital training although class is primarly analog. Materials fee: $150. Prerequisite: ART 237a or permission of the instructor.
A course intended for those wishing to explore intensely the practice of photography, whether analog or digital. The class is structured around individual projects, editing, and output size. Through the history of photography and film, discussions center on the potentials of black-and-white photography, color photography, video, and the assimilation of the three. Materials fee: $150. Prerequisites: ART 379b or equivalent, and, for those working digitally, ART 338a. Required of art majors concentrating in photography.
Required for First Year Graduate Students Yale School of Art.
Diving into the Wreck aspires to promote a larger collective and longer conversation around the consideration of “critical relevance” with respect to and outside one’s studio practice (critical practice/critical engagement) given the widened field of “rage” and a largely dehumanizing backdrop – with a staggering increase in social and economic inequality as well as a rise in and support for authoritarian populist political movements, in the ease with which a vocabulary of narrow ethno-nationalisms is applied, with the emergence of what Adorno foresaw as “authoritarian personalities” who, in turn, expound on racist and xenophobic agendas, with continued violent oppression that calls for a new language in feminism, with the proliferation of racially motivated police violence and incarceration, state violence, and among others prescient issues, the question of human sexuality no longer located, according to the writer and activist Jennifer Finney Boylan, “about who you want to go to bed with, but it’s who you want to go to bed as.”
The course will adopt a lecture/seminar approach with eight (8) separate sessions to be held on scheduled Wednesdays throughout the Fall semester and led by Dean and Professor Kuzma with the additional participation of confirmed Visiting Lecturers — Claudia Rankine (poet, essayist playwright, and author of Citizen: An American Lyric), artist Cameron Rowland, artist Walid Raad, cultural critic, historian and performance studies scholar Tavia Nyong’o, philosopher Peter Osborne, among others. Additional individual studio visits by the attending lecturers may be available as the course schedule develops.
Each session will include a 60 to 90-minute presentation followed by a 60 to 90-minute open discussion. Enrolled students must attend each session, have read the requested readings in advance, with the aim to participate in the open discussion following each presentation.
For first-year photography students. Structured to give students a comprehensive working knowledge of the digital workflow, this class addresses everything from capture to process to print. Students explore procedures in film scanning and raw image processing, discuss the importance of color management, and address the versatility of ink-jet printing. Working extensively with Photoshop, students use advanced methods in color correction and image processing, utilizing the medium as a means of refining and clarifying one’s artistic language. Students are expected to incorporate these techniques when working on their evolving photography projects and are asked to bring work to class on a regular basis for discussion and review.
For second-year photography students. This class is team-taught by curators and critics, who approach photography from a wide variety of vantage points, to examine critical issues in contemporary photography. The class is taught both in New Haven and New York at various museums and art institutions. The course is designed to help students formulate their thesis projects and exhibitions.
For first-year photography students. As the digital model of photography increasingly blurs distinctions between downloads, frame grabs, high-res captures, and sequential images, and artists look to address the multimedia landscape that is everyday life, a new perspective is opened up on the entwined relationship between still and moving image as visual art. This class examines how photographic genres such as psychological portraiture, street photography, the social landscape, appropriation, and cinematic tableaux have been addressed, scrutinized, and extended in both early experimental film and contemporary video art. In a series of production workshops, students explore various approaches and techniques for reinterpreting their photographic subjects into video and other screen-based mediums, while regular screenings and critical reading are the focus of in-class discussions.
Open to second-year students only. This class surveys the landscape of the contemporary photobook with a focus on producing a class book.
This seminar offers students a rigorous introduction to cross-disciplinary perspectives on contemporary artistic practices. It lends special attention to matters of intersectionality. The seminar emphasizes such disciplines as human rights studies, critical theory and critical race theory, political and moral philosophy, gender studies, and queer studies. It also emphasizes international artists, artists of color, queer artists, and artists whose work engages pertinent critical discourses. In addition to taught sessions, the seminar features several artists and critics as guest lecturers. Limited Enrollment. David Kim and Ka-Man Tse
A full-year course for first-year photography students. This course explores approaches to contemporary photography, from 1975 to the present, beginning with the first generation of postmodernism. Students examine the relationship that art photography has to popular culture and the blurred relationship among photography, film, fashion, advertising, and pornography. Trends and approaches to art photography, including tableaux, appropriation, abstraction, and simulation, are studied. Students also explore how contemporary photographers have worked to challenge, expand, and reinvent such traditional genres as portraiture, the nude, landscape, and still-life photography. Visiting artists, photographers, and filmmakers talk about their work in the context of the discussions at hand.
Limited to graduate photography students. Ongoing work is reviewed at weekly seminar meetings and privately. Gregory Crewdson, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, John Pilson, Collier Schorr, Roe Ethridge, Roni Horn, and faculty
| Class Type | Fall | Spring |
|---|---|---|
| Photography 845: | 9 | 9 |
| Photography 828: | 0 | 3 |
| Art 949a, Critical Practice: | 3 | 0 |
| Academic or Studio Electives: | 3 | 3 |
| Total minimum credits for each Term: | 15 | 15 |
| Class Type | Fall | Spring |
|---|---|---|
| Photography 845: | 9 | 9 |
| Academic or Studio Electives: | 6 | 6 |
| Total minimum credits for each Term: | 15 | 15 |