Introduction to the history of photography: 1900-1950

This five-week course provides an introduction to the role of photography in the history of art and artists in the early 20th; how photography was used by painters and how photography developed into an independent art form.In the early 20th century we look at how photography becomes a tool of Modernism, looking at works by Alvin Langdon Coburn, Paul Nash; of Surrealism, with works by May Ray, Max Ernst, Roland Penrose and Eileen Agar, and of Russian Suprematism and Constructivism, with works by El Lissitzky and Alexander Rodchenko. We look at how photographs have been used by painters as diverse as Walter Sickert, Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol.This course is structured around lectures and class discussions exploring the social and technological history of photography and its role in the history of art.