Course description
The course is centered upon the phenomenon of private photography. By drawing on theoretical texts dedicated to private photographs in history, culture and the archive, and on the material from private and public collections, this course explores the functions, the meanings and the cultural effects of private photography in an interdisciplinary approach. The course is balanced between discovering the main traits of academic and critical thought on private photography and hands-on exploration of photographic images, objects and practices by the students. Private photography is viewed in its connection with history, memory, identity and fantasy and imagination. Students are encouraged to address photographic material from their own or other accessible family and private archives, and private archives in the collections of Venetian institutions are planned to be addressed for this course as well*.
Possible topics of interest: vernacular photography, private photography, domestic photography, photographic practices, social and cultural history of photography, photography as material object, photography and affect, emotional, embodied, spatio-temporal experience of photographic objects and practices, photography as a medium, family photography, photography in family archives, autobiography, photography as document and record, photography as a tool of constructing self-identity, private photography as a fantasy, photography in social media, identity crisis, techniques of self, remembering and forgetting with photography, photography and historical trauma, private photography and public history.
Learning outcomes of the course: the course aims to introduce students to theoretical work and research on private photography; to familiarize them with central problems of academic research of this group of phenomena; to allow and encourage students to problematize photographic material. The students will develop their critical and reflective thinking skills. They will train to apply theoretical knowledge to specific photographic material.

Teaching and evaluation methods
The course employs a variety of teaching methods, in order to encourage student participation, interaction and exchange of ideas, as well as to develop critical and creative thinking, reading, writing and oral argumentation skills. The course includes reading assignments, written summary/revision assignments on course topics and papers to read, reflective written assignments focusing on specific photographic material, in-class discussions, part of which are group and pair work assignments.

Breakdown of the final grade:
5 summary/revision assignments: written or presentations - 40%
2 reflective written assignments on specific photographic material - 20 %
2 quizzes - 10%
participation in discussion - weekly - 30%

Bibliography: **
Barthes, R. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981.
Batchen, G. Forget Me Not. Photography and Remembrance.
Batchen, G. Vernacular Photographies, in: Each Wild Idea. MIT, 2002. Pp.56-81.
Boerdam, J., Martinius, W.O. Family Photographs— A Sociological Approach, Netherlands’ Journal of Sociology 16 (1980):p.96.
Boitsova, O. Photographs in Contemporary Russian Rural and Urban Interiors,in Roberts, G.H.(ed.), Material Culture in Russia and the USSR: Things, Values and Identities. London: Bloomsbury, 2017.
Brown, E., Phy, Thy (eds.). Feeling Photography. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.
Chalfen, R. Snapshot Versions of Life. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University
Press, 1987.
Chalfen, R.The Significance of Memory in Japanese Family Photography, in Shevchenko, O.(ed.), Double Exposure. Memory&Photography. New Brunswick and London:Transaction Publishers, 2014. Pp.115-146.
Edwards, E. Objects of Aff ect: Photography beyond the Image, Annual Review of Anthropology 41 (2012): pp. 221– 234.
Edwards, E., Hart, J. (eds.) Photographs Objects Histories. On The Materiality of Images. Routledge, 2004
Hirsch, M., Spitzer, L. School Photos in Liquid Time. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2020.
Kriebel, S. Theories of Photography: A Short History, in Elkins, J.(ed.), Photography Theory. NY: Routledge, 2007. Pp. 3-50.
Kuhn, A. Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination. London: Verso, 1995.
Kuhn, A. Photography and Cultural Memory: A Methodological Exploration, Visual Studies 22, no. 3 (2007), p.290.
Larsen, J. Families Seen Sightseeing: Performativity of Tourist Photography, Space and Culture 8 (2005): pp. 416– 434.
Olin, M. Touching Photographs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Pinney, C. Piercing the Skin of the Idol,in Pinney, C., Thomas, N.(eds.), Beyond Aesthetics: Art and the Technologies of Enchantment. Oxford: Berg, 2001. Pp.157– 180.
Sandbye, M. Looking at the Family Photo Album: a Resumed Theoretical Discussion of Why and How, Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 6, no. 1 (2014):pp.1-18.
Sarkisova, O., Shevchenko, O. In Visible Presence. Soviet Afterlives in Family Photos. MIT, 2023.

* For this course, I am interested to address private photography in the archives and museums of Venice, if possible (1-2 is enough). Some of the archives that include this sort of photography are:
Palazzo Pesaro Orfei
Museo Ebraico di Venezia
Universita IUAV. Archivio Progetti
Fondo Fotografico Tomaso Filippi Instituzioni di Ricovero e di Educazione di Venezia
Museo M9

** all reading materials will be provided to students as pdf files.