Everywhere in the contemporary art world, photography appears to be undergoing an identity crisis. During its encounter with Conceptual art in the 1960s, the photographic medium was stripped of the very specificity that enabled its institutional recognition as a fine art in its own right. Those loosened distinctions have transformed photography nearly beyond recognition today. This rigorous course explores the shifts in the recent theory and practice of photography: toward the pictorial (e.g., the tableaux of Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Jeff Wall) and the cinematic (the moving images of Joachim Koester, Sharon Lockhart, Sam Taylor Wood), on one hand, and toward the documentary (Rineke Dijkstra, Zoe Leonard, Andrea Robbins and Max Becher) and the staged (Gregory Crewdson, Thomas Demand, Philip Lorca di Corcia), on the other.

The course is taught by Sotheby’s Institute of Art faculty member, Melanie Mariño whose areas of specialization are modern and contemporary art, history of photography, critical theory, and globalization studies. She has recently published on the work of Santiago Sierra and Shahzia Sikander. She has worked in research and curatorial capacities at the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Guggenheim Museum and has a Ph.D. from Cornell University and M.A. from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University.

Course dates
June 14 – 24, 2010
Times: 10:00am – 12:00pm, Monday - Thursday, No class Friday
Location: 570 Lexington Avenue.

Course fee
$1,500

Download Registration Form and Information.

Download Frequently Asked Questions about Summer Study.

For further information, please contact: publicprogramsNY@sothebysinstitute.com
Tel: +1 212.517.3929