Author Archives: Sandra Cheng

Homework #7: Robert Frank’s America

For this homework assignment, please watch a short video on last year’s exhibition at Stanford University’s Cantor Center for Visual Arts. The exhibition highlighted Robert Frank’s seminal photography book The Americans (1958) and the photographs that didn’t make it into … Continue reading

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Homework #6: Instagram and the Art of Food Photography

Happy Thanksgiving! This week seems an appropriate time to consider how photographing food can be an art form. A recent article “Food instagrammers turn their accounts in professions” in the Wall Street Journal highlights how some people have turned their obsession with … Continue reading

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Homework #5: Robert Capa’s Death of a Loyalist Soldier

At the age of 23, Robert Capa took a photograph that many have labeled the greatest war photograph of all time.  Taken during the Spanish Civil War, the renown of Capa’s photograph, Falling Soldier or Death of a Loyalist Soldier, reverberated around the world … Continue reading

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Homework #4: Walker Evans’ Subway Portraits

Walker Evans’ photographed people on the New York City subways between 1938-1941. He only published these photographs 25 years later in his book, Many Are Called, which was re-issued in 2004. Read a review about the new edition in the New York … Continue reading

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Homework #3: Documenting Spiritualism

In the spirit of Halloween, this homework is on spirit photography. We briefly touched on the beginnings of spirit photography in class with William Mumler’s photograph of Mary Todd Lincoln with the ghost of Abraham Lincoln. The contemporary photographer Shannon Taggart … Continue reading

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Reminder: Be On Time!

The midterm is on Tuesday Oct 20th, 10 am in Atrium 631. Because we begin with the slide id’s please make sure you arrive on time, otherwise you will not have a chance to go back if you miss the … Continue reading

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Homework #2: The Civil War Tintype and Modern Soldiers

Frederick Scott Archer’s wet-plate collodion process dominated photographic production in the mid-19th century.  There were three options with the wet-plate process, you could produce a glass negative or an ambrotype (a glass negative with dark backing) or a tintype (also … Continue reading

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Homework #1: The Power of Photography and the Syrian War Crisis

On September 2, 2015, Nilufer Demir, a photographer working for a Turkish news agency, took a series of photos of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old toddler, who drowned as his family tried to escape the ravages of the civil war in … Continue reading

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Welcome!

Hello ARTH 1100 students! Welcome to the class website for Professor Sandra Cheng’s course on the History of Photography.  Our section meets Tues/Thurs mornings at 10 AM. The OpenLab is an integral component to our class. I look forward to … Continue reading

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