VISU3041: Photography In East Asia

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• To introduce students to the advanced study of photography.
• Thereby also to introduce students to the medium and practice of photography as it has emerged both within Chinese and Japanese contexts and transnationally.
• To develop students' research skills.
• To complement the current provision of research-led final-year modules in Chinese and Japanese, responding to student demand for greater choice and more emphasis on visual culture.
• To provide a route into MLAC's taught MA programme in Visual Arts and Culture.

• The module will explore the intertwining of photography, culture, modernity and philosophical and critical reflections on art, media, and perception in China and Japan from the 19th to the 21st century. Topics may include:
• Conceptual history of the camera and photography in China and Japan in relation to the West.
• The emergence of modernist photographic practices in the context of colonialist modernity in East Asia.
• The relations between documentary practices and debates and experimental photography in postwar Japan.
• Explorations of the relationships among body, perception, phenomenology, and medium in photography and art discourse in contemporary Japan and China.
• Photography as a mode of engaging with questions of place and displacement, historical memory, and the presence of the past in contemporary China.
• Photography as an ecological medium in an era of environmental degradation and climate change.
• Rethinking the nature of photography in an era of digital technologies.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• By the end of this module, students will gain:
• An understanding of the practice and theoretical reflection on photography in China and Japan in the light of wider social, political and artistic developments.
• Knowledge of the methodologies appropriate to the interpretation of individual images and groups of images.
• Enhanced knowledge of the specialised language required to talk and write about visual culture.

Subject-specific Skills:

• By the end of this module, students will gain:
• The ability to interpret photographs in terms of their formal, material, and aesthetic properties.
• The ability to analyse photographs in terms of their contexts of production and dissemination.
• The ability to critically evaluate and apply a range of methodologies in order to perform the above analyses. The ability to critically analyse the theoretical discourse to which photography has given rise.

Key Skills:

• By the end of this module, students will gain:
• Enhanced range and fluency of expression.
• The ability to formulate arguments coherently and to present them in written and oral form.
• The ability to identify an appropriate set of research questions and to pursue a guided programme or self-directed study, leading to the production of an extended piece of written work.

• The module will be taught by means of plenary sessions (structured round brief lectures and student presentations) and seminars in which the issues raised in plenaries are subjected to more in-depth discussion. Weekly reading in preparation for plenaries and seminars will foster the acquisition of the relevant subject-specific knowledge, and this knowledge will be further enhanced as students debate issues surrounding photography in East Asia. Such debate will allow students to develop their analytical capacities and to explore a range of methodological approaches to the analysis of the photographic medium. Seminars will aid acquisition of the relevant critical tools, and oral presentations by students will help them develop skills in organising arguments and presenting them fluently.
• Summative assessment will consist of a 1500-word critical analysis based on a contextually-informed reading of a specific image; and a 3500-word research project based on one of the topics covered in the course and structured round a series of research questions developed by the student in consultation with the tutor. Both exercises are designed to test students' subject-specific knowledge and their ability to use their subject-specific skills in order to evaluate this knowledge. The project will also test students' independent research skills.

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