Lensbased Art Practice

This course introduces students first to practices from the early stages of photography, its context and materiality. Central are the means of experimentation and economic and scientific components in the history of photography evolving.  In close collaboration with the workshops resources and possibilities this is a practical and  practice oriented  course. Acquiring the understanding of processes and instruments, temporal and special perspectives of  lensbased approaches in art crucially sparks from the darkroom. From there it connects to challenges of representation, refraction and components of the image in various render.  The key is hands on production.

When finishing the course the student:

• knows  tendencies and selected elements of photographic art and history.  
• has  hands on knowledge and  can  develop tools for lensbased artistic production.  
• knows  methods of dissemination of lensbased  production inside and outside the academy.  

Practical structured  exercises in the group and workshops evolve  around the  work in the darkroom: developing and printing on various analogue and digital materials using various techniques including for example camera obscura. The basic exercises will involve the classical apparatus, the film and  photo studio, light as material and different printing and mapping strategies. This will include collective work, digital and analogue as well as two and three dimensional  formats. With archival practices as a component to the more advanced  algorithmical  challenges concepts and contexts will be discussed and physically explored  with collective tasks assignments backed up from lectures. There can be a review of work produced in the form of exhibition for example.

Specific conditions

Approved compulsory assignments are valid in the current semester.

This course is offered to incoming exchange students and will be taught in English if necessary.