Who are we?  How do we live in this world?  Documentary photography has been an essential tool for storytelling since the invention of the camera.  It’s a form of visual art that captures real-life — the everyday and the extraordinary situations — providing a glimpse into the lives of people and cultures around the world.  This 6-week course will take a deep dive into each of four genres of documentary photography: photojournalism, social documentary photography, street photography, and environmental/conservation photography.  Each session will be a combination of striking visual presentation with accompanying informal lecture, interspersed with lively interaction as we together look closely and analyze individual photographs. For LLAIC members in my previous courses, I plan to focus on photographers that we have not explored in previous classes.  I look forward to sharing this dynamic, illuminating, and meaningful odyssey with you!

In terms of pre-class preparation, we will be learning from a variety of videos and readings that will add context to our class sessions and require about 1-2 hours of your time per class.  Each preparation will also include a Close Looking document with images of some of the photographs that we will be looking at that week, along with some questions for consideration and close-looking.
  

The course will require desktop (preferably) or laptop computers with as large a viewing screen as possible, so that the images and their details will really stand out for you.  You will not be able to view the many images during class closely enough on an iPad or other tablets.