The Rhetoric of Visual Witnessing

What is the potential and what are the problems of still photography as a mode of witnessing? In this course we will consider the place of photography in the theory of witnessing and testimony, exploring the rhetorical relationship between picture making, culture and the representation of historical events. Readings will be drawn from recent works of theory, criticism and practice that variously address the status of the witness and techniques of observation, record and the photographic representation of catastrophe.

Required readings.
Course reader of essays and book chapters.
Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis and History
Albert Camus, The Plague
Albert Camus, The Fall
Art Spiegelman, Maus I & II
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others
Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida