Master Class I: The Perplexing World of Contemporary Art Photography

How Did We Get Here?

Featured Speaker: Amanda Dahlgren, MFA

This series of five lectures will demystify contemporary art photography, such as that seen on museum and gallery walls and in art books. If you have ever scratched your head reading an artist’s statement or wondered whatever happened to craft and technical skill in photography, then this is the series for you. Topics will include the dramatic shift from modernism into postmodernism and contemporary strategies used by photographic artists, such as The Directorial Mode, the Deadpan Aesthetic, The Snapshot Aesthetic, and Appropriation.

Lecture 1: This introductory lecture will cover the “classic” way of creating and judging photography — according to craftsmanship, composition, and content — which comes from a Modernist tradition. The lecture will discuss the historical reasons for the dramatic shift from Modernism to Postmodernism and will include an introduction to what Conceptual Art did to the practice of photography as an art form.

Event Details:

Amanda Dahlgren is a college photography instructor and a gallery educator at the Museum of Photographic Arts. She is passionate about helping people not only to understand photography but also to create their own meaningful work. She is herself a photographic artist, co-producer of Open Show San Diego, and Chair for the West Chapter of the Society for Photographic Education.

Coordinator: Marsha Korobkin

Note: Master Classes meet multiple times over the course of a few weeks to allow in-depth study of different topics. When you enroll in any single Master Class meeting, you are automatically enrolled in the entire series at no extra charge. Attendance is always optional.

Meetings in this series: