Widening the Lens: Revisiting Photo History

In this course, a wide range of photographic practices, from the medium’s conception in the 19th century to the modern uses of images via social media, appropriation, and storytelling including VR technology will be discussed.  By (re) addressing photography’s multiple histories: as an artistic medium, as social text, as a technological tool, and as a cultural practice, we aim to rewrite its history to better reflect the diverse range of practitioners who have been omitted or written out of its rich history. Short reading on photography will be assigned. These pieces are readily available online and include writing by Sarah Lewis, bell hooks, Susan Sontag, Robert Adams, Teju Cole, W.J.T. Mitchell, and Hilton Als. Students will leave this course with increased language for photography and an expanded awareness of photographic representation and its role in history. 

Lesly Deschler Canossi is a cultural producer, photographer and photo educator.  She is faculty at International Center of Photography (ICP), owner of Fiber Ink Studio, and co-creator of Women Picturing Revolution. She consults on a variety of photographic projects from edit to print for individual artists. She holds an MFA from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA), has taught at the Lamar Dodd School of Art in Cortona, Italy, Columbia University, MICA, Harlem School of the Arts and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2014 her book Domestic Negotiations was published and she continues to work on this series believing this to be a lifelong pursuit as the role of mother, wife, and artist is not a fixed position. She created the course entitled Navigating the Domestic: Mother As Artist and co-created the Facebook group Mother As Artist in an attempt to form a community with a focus on politically engaged art by or about women who happen to be mothers. In the summer of 2016 Lesly along with co-created with independent curator and artist Zoraida Lopez-Diago created Women Picturing Revolution (WPR). WPR surveys female identifying lens based artists who document war, conflicts, crises, and revolution in private realms and public spaces. Special focus is placed on the impact that conflict has on women and girls. In March 2017 she co taught a seminar at IRAAS Columbia University's Institute for Research in African-American Studies entitled Women Picturing Revolution: Focus on Africa and the African Diaspora. In December 2019 Women Picturing Revolution presented at the Tate Modern on the topic of their forthcoming book Representations of Black Motherhood and Photography for Fast Forward: Women in Photography. She lives in Beacon, New York.