Lecture 1: The Pioneers
In the 19th century entrepreneurs, amateurs and artists took up the challenges of bulky cameras and complicated chemistry, producing the first masterpieces of photographic portraiture, landscape, social documentary and inventive "literary" tableaux. Meet Julia Margaret Cameron, Nadar, Carleton E. Watkins and Gertrude Käsebier.
Lecture 2: Modernism in Europe
In the wake of World War I photography comes into its own as an art form. While August Sander, André Kertész and Brassaï capture the faces and places of modern Europe, Alexander Rodchenko and Man Ray put photography at the service of revolution and dreams, and Josef Sudek uses the camera as a means of highly personal expression.
Lecture 3: Modernism in North America
Edward Steichen brings his Jazz Age vision to the pages of Vanity Fair. Paul Strand and Berenice Abbott capture the dynamism of New York City and its people, while Edward Weston and Ansel Adams set the standard for the fine print, and radical Tina Modotti marries a modernist vision with a social documentarian's empathy.
Lecture 4: The Recording Eye
Photography's role as witness to events large and small gives birth to iconic images of the 20th century, from the Depression era Deep South, to the boulevards of Paris, to the sidewalks of Harlem. We explore works by Henri Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Robert Frank, Roy DeCarava and Vivian Maier.
Lecture 5: Art and Commerce
Photography's potential as a medium for personal expression comes to fore in the work Diane Arbus, Harry Callahan and Daido Moriyama, while Irving Penn, Richard Avedon and Annie Leibovitz bring an artist's eye to the commercial realms of fashion and portraiture.
Lecture 6: The Contemporaries
Since the 1980s photography has been an equal player in the wider art world, breaking auction records and appearing in prestigious exhibitions worldwide. Encounter some of the most celebrated figures in the medium today, including Joel Meyerowitz, Sally Mann, Cindy Sherman, Sebastião Salgado, Andreas Gursky and Edward Burtynsky.