Portraits and snapshots
Since the Civil War, portrait and snapshot photography have provided a visual history of life - and transformed society. This program explores how professional and amateur photographers capture the essence of people while considering the intensely p...
Persuasion, propaganda, and photography
This program addresses the emotionally manipulative power of photography by illustrating how commercial advertising has created an obsession with youth and physical perfection and can exploit viewers' fascinations with celebrity, sexuality, and viol...
Introduction to photography and visual literacy
Movies, magazines, TV, billboards, the Web - the world is filled with captivating photographic images competing for viewers' attention. Not surprisingly, citizens of the Global Village are experiencing a growing need for visual literacy: the ability...
Photography: making art and recording life
Once strictly considered a visual recording device, the camera has expanded beyond its documentational niche and made places for itself in the worlds of fine art, advertising, and news media as well. This program describes existing and emerging genr...
Truth or fiction?: photography and ethics
Photographs have the potential to present powerful truths - or to create convincing fictions. This program uses case studies involving Iwo Jima, Elian Gonzalez, and O. J. Simpson to show how images can be manipulated to influence the way viewers per...
Photographic storytelling
This program examines how photographers work with images to communicate stories and ideas and how viewers interpret those images. Message manipulation deriving from point of view, context, editing, superimposing, cropping, recoloring, and captioning...
Decoding photographic images
When setting up a shot, a photographer works with composition, lighting, and color to create a subliminal subtext that reinforces or even carries the meaning of his or her subject. This program illustrates how basic components of photography - line,...
Photography and the brain
How do photographic images evoke meaning and emotion? To understand that, viewers first need to understand how the eyes and brain process input from the visual world. After an overview of the biomechanics of vision, this program explains how proximi...