Course Description:
In this course students will learn to see and interpret the landscape with fresh eyes and minds. We will endeavor to understand the l significance of contemporary landscape photography with a historical perspective. Large format film and digital approaches will be covered in depth.
Cerritos College Photo 252
Teacher: Ed Heckerman
Assignment #1:
Go somewhere intensely beautiful and photograph a landscape with no visible evidence of humanity. You may use any manually operable camera, film or digital. Larger formats are recommended, but not required.
Assignment #2:
Go somewhere extremely polluted or wrecked by human activity and make a photograph.
Assignment #3:
Ask yourself where and how you would like to live. Take your camera to the closest spot that approximates that ideal and photograph that place from afar, in context with the surrounding geography. Do not simply photograph a building - this is not an architecture photography assignment.
Assignment #4:
Go to a park where an ecosystem has been radically altered and designed into existence through the introduction of water from elsewhere. Make a photograph that displays the domesticated landscape. Try to find the wild within that.
Assignment #5:
Approach #1 – Make an installation outdoors in nature and the landscape. Consider that to be the art. Document the artwork with photography. This might require shooting from several angles, and perhaps returning to the site as it changes over time and through the seasons.
Approach #2 – Alter the landscape with the intention to make a photograph. Consider the photograph to be art. Remove the alterations you made to the site and leave the landscape as undisturbed as possible.
Approach #3 – Find an already existent earthwork and photograph it with the intention to make an image that both documents and transcends documentation. Consider both the photograph and the earthwork to be art..
Assignment #6:
Each student is required to assemble a portfolio of four or more fine art photographs that address landscape subject matter and issues. Possibilities include working a site (going repeatedly to the same location or concentrating on a consistent theme. The student is free to work either intuitively or methodically, however, a selection of "greatest hits" is not acceptable. In other words, there are many possible avenues to pursue but the work must show continuity both formally and referentially. For this assignment it is encouraged to think of "landscape" in very broad terms. That is to say, the photographs don't always need to be taken from far away. We can think of landscape photography as being an extension of the documentary genre, or as metaphor, or both. The student is encouraged to seek advice from the instructor as the project unfolds.