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note this is in 2 parts 1: the recorder (JP) We begin this unit by exploring the idea of the photographer as a recorder of the world. This session investigates questions of photographic truth and objectivity; the nature of photographic evidence and the ethics of photographic manipulation. It examines photography's earliest history and how its properties and purposes have been imagined from the beginning. Required reading: Batchen, G. (1999) Burning With Desire: The Conception of Photography. Cambridge, Mass: MIT; chapter 1.

part 2 1: the recorder (JP) We begin this unit by exploring the idea of the photographer as a recorder of the world. This session investigates questions of photographic truth and objectivity; the nature of photographic evidence and the ethics of photographic manipulation. It examines photography's earliest history and how its properties and purposes have been imagined from the beginning. Required reading: Batchen, G. (1999) Burning With Desire: The Conception of Photography. Cambridge, Mass: MIT; chapter 1.

Death's Showcase The Power of Image in Contemporary Democracy Ariella Azoulay This is a book about the public display of death in contemporary culture. It consists of a series of essays on specific cases in which death is displayed in museums and in photography. The essays focus mainly on representations of violence and death in events in recent Israeli history, including the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Palestinian Intifada, and on the visual presence of traumatic events in Israeli culture throughout the twentieth century. They show how images of these events both shape and aestheticize the viewer's experience of death.

The Civil Contract of Photography Ariella Azoulay Table of Contents In this groundbreaking work, Ariella Azoulay provides a compelling rethinking of the political and ethical status of photography. In her extraordinary account of the "civil contract" of photography, she thoroughly revises our understanding of the power relations that sustain and make possible photographic meanings. Photography, she insists, must be thought of and understood in its inseparability from the many catastrophes of recent history.

Article focusing on the convergence of traditional news reporting and web2.0 style user-generated content, from MIT's Convergence Culture Consortium (February 2007)