88009 Modern Places

Description

This subject develops students' knowledge of historical and contemporary photographic practices that are related to the analysis and representation of modern places. Furthermore, students are given the opportunity to develop a project that takes the idea of modern place as its subject. Reflecting on the subject lectures, seminars and tutorials and the student's independent research, concepts that underpin projects may include ideas of contested territory, the everyday, liminal space, the nocturnal and the contemporary sublime. Approaches to subject matter could include, for example, looking at the architecture of commercial spaces like shopping malls; places that are connected with travel such as airports, motorways, car parks; suburbia; natural landscapes and modern farming; wastelands and ruins; familiar or uncanny spaces. Ultimately, the images should communicate something about the nature of modern environments and the ways in which they affect us. Students' response to both the delivered material and in the development of their own projects should be self-reflexive and critically minded. Students are required to be ambitious in the way that they deal with both the form and the subject of their photographs so as to push at the boundaries of what we think we know about modern place and its photographic representation.

Typical availability

Spring session, City campus