Teaching at New York University

I currently offer two credit-bearing undergraduate courses at New York University in Abu Dhabi. Both courses explore the intersection between visual ethics and photography. Course descriptions are as follows:

Power and Ethics in Photography

Since its invention in 1839, photography has dominated our lives in ways that would have been unthinkable to the earliest pioneers of the medium—so much so that it’s almost impossible to imagine what a world without photographs might look like today. The relatively recent rise in smartphone technology and social media networks (e.g. Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat) brings to the fore new and age-old questions about how photographs alter the way we see and come to know the world. Drawing on the writings of Sontag, Sischy, Nochlin and Berger, this course analyzes the power of the medium in shaping our collective consciousness and the inevitable ethical questions that converge around truth, responsibility and representation.

The course begins with the fundamental tension between ‘photography as art’ and ‘photography as documentation’, and delves into the ethics and aesthetics of capturing pain, tragedy and death. It explores also how the medium can create the illusion of ‘reality’, particularly in its role in representing social and/or cultural remoteness. By drawing specifically on the work of Nochlin and Edward Said, the course looks into how representations of ‘otherness’ through the medium of photography can help reinforce societal power structures and dominant narratives about ‘us’ and ‘them’

The Ethics of the Image

From its invention in 1839, photography has been heralded as an objective medium. Few doubt the veracity of a photo-finish, an endoscopic medical image, a traffic camera’s violation report, or a surveillance shot of a crime scene. Photographs bear witness to the Mai Lai massacre, the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, the Sahel famine of the 1980s, and refugees fleeing the Syrian civil war. Though most readily embrace such visual testimony, we might also cede Susan Sontag’s point that photographs are a “species of rhetoric” that “simplify” and “create the illusion of consensus.” In what ways do a photographer’s choices of what to include and exclude suggest self-conscious framing from a specific vantage point? What ethical questions emerge from this tension between the medium’s supposed objectivity and the photographer’s admitted subjectivity? Students will explore ethical scenarios in photojournalism, travel photography, street photography, portraiture, and commercial photography as they confront questions about consent, privacy, representation, citizen responsibility, and propaganda. Coursework includes response papers, case study reports, photo-critiques, photography tasks, and photo essays.