Michael Shanks - Archaeography: Archaeography

Spring Quarter 2007 - CLASSART 141, CLASSART 241

Tuesday and Thursdays 10.00-10.50 in Metamedia - Building 500-204

Contact - mshanks@stanford.edu 650 996 8763

Uploaded Image

Houseteads Roman Fort, Hadrian's Wall UK - 1907

Archaeologists were pioneers in photography. For a discipline that specializes in the interrogation of historical sources that do not take a textual form, photography is a central practice, photographs essential resources.

Every university archaeology program includes some training in photography. But every archaeology program I know of treats photography as a technique rather than a practice, where the challenge for the student is to learn a more or less simple set of skills and principles for applying photography to archaeology. Learn the algorithms and you are able to apply the techniques to archaeological problems and circumstances: this is the orthodox pedagogical position in the discipline.

I take a very different view - that the disciplinary field of archaeology and the technology and forms of photography are part of a modern(ist) constitution - historically, from the late eighteenth century, they came into being together and are both part of a particular modern archaeological sensibility and imagination. Neither photography nor archaeology can be legitimately reduced to technique. Yet they almost always are.

Instead of technique therefore, this class focuses on material practice, instruments, workflow, engagments with places and things - archaeological work and photowork which together work on the (remains of) past in various ways to answer different needs and desires.

I am coming to think that this is actually a new (archaeological) way of dealing with media - as "modes of engagement".

Aims

The aim of this class is a simple one - to provide an environment in which students can develop the beginnings of a skill set and intellectual toolkit for practising thoughtful photography in archaeology.

By thoughtful I mean reflective and critical practice that constantly asks questions of the purpose, implications, forms and outputs of archaeological work. Not content with orthodox routines, critical practice is strategic and tactical thinking that constantly reevaluates its purpose, aware that productive change occurs through knowing precisely which rules to break and in what circumstances, and strives to increase its technical expertise on this basis.

For me, this is what the Archaeology Program at Stanford is all about.

Argument

Photography has deep roots in particular technologies of seeing and engaging with place, collection and temporal change.

Photography and archaeology, in the nineteenth century, helped constitute each other as fields of practice.

Photography is part of an archaeological mode of engagement with the past.

The concept of "Mode of engagement" is a way of understanding media forms, like photography, in a new and more productive and critical way.

The concept also helps to dismantle the radical opposition between digital and analogue photographic imagery. All photography is digital, just as digital photography has essential materlal manifestation.

Objectives

To become acquainted with a set of concepts that can be applied to the critique of photowork.

To increase the skill set associated with some different photographic techniques relevant to archaeological practice.

To tune a sensibility to the instruments and products of photography - cameras, lenses, prints and images.

To apply this intellectual toolkit, skill set and sensibility to archaeological scenarios.

To apply this intellectual toolkit, skill set and sensibility to a personal portfolio of work.

To deliver this portfolio in a digital medium.

Assignment and assessment

The class assignment is a personal portfolio of images on an archaeological theme. This is to be accompanied by a 3000 word critical essay explaining the context and rationale for the portfolio. Both are to be submitted digitally and online via the class web site.

Assessment of the portfolio will be according to criteria such as: technical facility, personal improvement in technical facility, realization of objectives set in the accompanying essay, mode of delivery, originality, effectiveness of visual narrative/argument in relation to the accompanying paper/critique.

Due date - Wednesday June 13 4.00 pm

Course schedule and summary

Resources

The facilites of the Metamedia Lab are available for all class members. These include a collection of over 40 analogue and digital cameras and full digital publishing facilities.

The class website will develop its own gallery of images, with commentary, exploring the themes of the course.

The readings for the class are available under each week's theme. They can also be found collected in Archaeography - select readings