This course has undergone some changes and is now being taught primarily as a ‘methods’ class.  This means there will be a lot more photography, critiques, and discussion.  We’ll continue to read critical works and develop our analytical skills but the emphasis will shift to active questions concerning the use of photography in anthropology and cultural studies.

We’ll be exploring some of these excellent photography sites:

• http://www.combinations.fr/spip.php?article10&lang=en
• http://www.afghanboxcamera.com/

Your final projects can be picked up after 11am Noon (sorry I’m having bike trouble) on Tuesday, Dec. 15 from the main office in Anthropology department during regular office hours (Monday to Friday between 8-11:59am and 1-4:30pm).  They’ll be in a clearly marked box.

~Craig

-Craig

I will be holding an informal crit and workshop on the afternoon of Wednesday, December 9th.  1-2pm in our usual class room.

ant325_Finalproject

Nov. 12 Thursday

Taussig, Michael (2003) “The Diary as Witness: An anthropologist writes what he must,” The Chronicle Review. Dec. 19, 2003.

• taussig2003 – download this pdf

Minor scrapbook #1

Nov. 17 Tuesday

Highmore, Ch. 9. Postcript: Everyday life and the future of cultural studies.

Major scrapbook proposal

Nov. 19 Thursday

Sontag, Susan “Regarding the torture of others”

• Published in the New York Times

Nov. 24 Tuesday

Minor scrapbook #2

Dec. 9 Wednesday:

Friday, December 11: Final papers must be in.

Major scrapbook is due today by 4:30pm in the Anthropology main office (EPS 1.130).  Do not place assignments under my door.  I will also not be accepting late assignments, as I have no flexibility in the date by which I need to submit your grades.

Anne suggest some great links for upcoming events

• The local darkroom coop is having their annual show on Friday, November 13 (6:30 -9) at the Pearl Street Coop
  • www.darkroomcoop.net/
• This weekend and next is the east austin studio tour.  There are a couple photographers opening up their spaces and a few galleries have photography hung right now.  Bikes recommended.
  • www.eastaustinstudiotour.com/index.html

Hannah sent this one in last week (sorry I forgot to post it!)

• This is a lovely photo study, and an excellent way of playing with Google Maps!
  • walkinghometo50.wordpress.com/2009/02/22/destination-argleton-visiting-an-imaginary-place/
• This dedicated B&W site:
  • blackandwtf.tumblr.com/
  • BTW tumblr.com is a great visual-style blog for posting this kind of thing.

Scrapbooks are, as Katriel and Farrel write, “an established mode of self-narration” in mainstream American culture.  In our exploration of the photographic image and the everyday we need to consider how people use photographs—not photographers, not magazine layout artists, but real honest to goodness pie eating, tea-bagging Americans.  The memorialization of events through the scrapbook form is an important cultural production in America.  It is an art of memory and an art of self-narration that is often overlooked and/or undervalued.

For your first minor scrapbook assignment you are asked to create a two to three page formal scrapbook entry that documents an event.  Your task is to explore the form of the contemporary scrapbook through an engagement with it.  The scrapbook needs to foreground photography in the scrapbook but it needs also to consider the larger ecology of the scrapbook.  You can use photographs from an event that has already passed or you can document a specific event.

You should include a typed metacommentary (200-500 words) that briefly discusses the project in terms of Katriel and Farrel’s article and explains your approach to the aesthetic organization of the scrapbook.

Simplified:

• Complete a conventional scrapbook entry (2-3 pages)
  • This means baubles and beads, fancy paper and ribbons.
  • Make sure the pages are protected (either in a book or in some protective enclosure).
  • The scrapbook needs to self-aware and self-critical.  You’re doing a scrapbook at the same time as critiquing it.
  • Due. November 12^th.

Katriel, Tamar, and Thomas Farrell. 1991. Scrapbooks as Cultural Texts: An American Art of Memory. Text & Performance Quarterly 11, no. 1: 1.

katriel-farrel1991

• On google maps (when you’re editing) you can select the option to add a description to a place marker in plain text, rich text, or html.  In rich text  you are given the option to link an image.  All you do is click on the image icon and it asks for the image url.
• You get this url by going to the Picasa Web Albums page and right-clicking on the image.  In Firefox you get a drop down menu that gives you the option of “copy image location”.  This is what you want to do.  You then paste that information (the unique address or URL of the image) into the field on the google maps website.
• Note: for some odd reason the URL you get when you click “Link to this photo” in Picasaweb doesn’t work.  I don’t know why that is but it is the case.  Trust me, don’t do it.