Course description
The media have substituted themselves for the older world. Even if we should wish to recover that older world we can do it only by an intensive study of the ways in which the media have swallowed it. ---Marshall McLuhan

This course provides an overview of photography from pre-photographic times to the present. Given that there is no single history, but only histories of the medium, the course will explore a variety of approaches to the study of photography, its emergence as a technology for documenting the world, its evolution in relation to other art forms, its connection to other fields of knowledge (i.e., medicine, anthropology, history, post-colonial studies), its role in the development of mass culture, and its use as a means of social control. Students will consider the photographic image in a range of contexts, including art, advertising, journalism, and propaganda, and will explore the social, political and ethical consequences of photographic media in contemporary culture.

Aims and objectives
By the end of the semester, students should have:
_Gained a basic knowledge of photographic history, its major events, practitioners, and theorists.
_Developed a basic comprehension of the various technical processes behind different types of photography.
_Developed familiarity with accessing significant local repositories of photographs for further study and research opportunities.
_Developed an understanding of photography as a value and an idea that has played an important role in world culture, its relationship to theories of truth and knowledge, to the development of modernity and to the radical social transformations of the past two centuries.
_Acquired an ability to think critically about images and visuality in a range of contexts, including art, advertising, journalism and propaganda, and to explore the social, political and ethical consequences of visual media in contemporary culture.

Course duration: 40 hours of tuition
Credits equivalence: 6 ECTS

Last updated: June 12, 2026