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Author Topic: MOMA launches the Free Online Course "Seeing Through Photographs"  (Read 2587 times)

Slobodan Blagojevic

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The Museum of Modern Art in New York launches the free online course "Seeing Through Photographs" via Coursera.

"Seeing Through Photographs" can be found at www.coursera.org/learn/photography.

Quote
The course explores the following themes:

• Introduction to Seeing Through Photographs
• One Subject, Many Perspectives
• Documentary Photography
• Pictures of People
• Constructing Narratives and Challenging Histories
• Ocean of Images: Photography and Contemporary Culture

Full article here.

kencameron

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Re: MOMA launches the Free Online Course "Seeing Through Photographs"
« Reply #1 on: February 13, 2016, 12:09:19 am »

Thanks for this. I might give it a go. I have done other Coursera courses. Are you planning to do it yourself?
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Ken Cameron

Rob C

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Re: MOMA launches the Free Online Course "Seeing Through Photographs"
« Reply #2 on: February 13, 2016, 05:04:56 am »

Hi Slobodan,

More solutions in search of a problem?

I guess justification for 'intellectual' edifices is implicitly part of the job description.

Rob C

Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: MOMA launches the Free Online Course "Seeing Through Photographs"
« Reply #3 on: February 13, 2016, 11:44:42 am »

... More solutions in search of a problem?...

Some people like to take photographs, some to talk about it, and yet some both. The course is for the latter two. Or not.

Rob C

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Re: MOMA launches the Free Online Course "Seeing Through Photographs"
« Reply #4 on: February 13, 2016, 12:11:13 pm »

Some people like to take photographs, some to talk about it, and yet some both. The course is for the latter two. Or not.


I don't think of it like that, I think of it as a product/justification of the organizations putting this kind of stuff out... you can't have these cultural centres if they aren't also seen to be 'contributing' something. Nobody cares to assess the contributions - they are just happy to see them being made - the justification for all the donations and feel-good factors enshrined in keeping such structures alive and kicking. We used to have an old-boys club when I left school... I hear that it vanished during the 70s; I don't know for sure because I didn't join.

What the hell was wrong with lunch today? Is dyspepsia original sin because I was chef?

This'll pick me up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG0wpoMBPZA

Rob C
« Last Edit: February 13, 2016, 12:29:29 pm by Rob C »
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kencameron

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Re: MOMA launches the Free Online Course "Seeing Through Photographs"
« Reply #5 on: February 13, 2016, 03:23:05 pm »


I don't think of it like that, I think of it as a product/justification of the organizations putting this kind of stuff out... you can't have these cultural centres if they aren't also seen to be 'contributing' something. Nobody cares to assess the contributions - they are just happy to see them being made - the justification for all the donations and feel-good factors enshrined in keeping such structures alive and kicking.

Rob C
You would find, if you actually did an on line course, that the participants have no inhibitions whatsoever in "assessing the contributions", positively and negatively, in the lively and informed online forums that are the best part of such courses. And maybe the institutions who fund them and (especially) the teachers who run them simply want to contribute something, rather than wanting to be seen to contribute something. The teachers certainly usually come across that way to me. Do you judge these things by your own motivations - do you personally do things to contribute, or to be seen contributing? Scepticism is a virtue but cynicism is an illness, IMO, and what distinguishes them is that scepticism is selective and evidence based.
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Ken Cameron

Isaac

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Re: MOMA launches the Free Online Course "Seeing Through Photographs"
« Reply #6 on: February 13, 2016, 03:45:49 pm »

Quote
The problem with cynicism apart from its intrinsic illogicality, is that it blinds us to possibilities, and very often transforms our negative estimates and expectations into self-fulfilling prophecies. … Neither the cynic nor the naive optimist is paying the right kind of attention to the world around himself. Rather than seeing things as they are, he sees them as he is predisposed to see them.

Being Logical p93
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Nelsonretreat

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Re: MOMA launches the Free Online Course "Seeing Through Photographs"
« Reply #7 on: February 13, 2016, 08:40:48 pm »


you can't have these cultural centres if they aren't also seen to be 'contributing' something. Nobody cares to assess the contributions - they are just happy to see them being made - the justification for all the donations and feel-good factors enshrined in keeping such structures alive and kicking.
Rob C

Rob.. yet again you have hait the nail on the proverbial head. Why on earth does any cultural institution waste time and money trying to contribute to our knowledge and understanding? In fact, come to think of it, what use is knowledge and understanding at all? I'd be interested in reading your opinions on the waste of time and money which our universities are responsible for. Time to put these money grabbing, unassessed cultual elitists in their place I think.  Rob, you are just the man to do it as you seem ideally suited.
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Rob C

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Re: MOMA launches the Free Online Course "Seeing Through Photographs"
« Reply #8 on: February 14, 2016, 04:48:27 am »

Rob.. yet again you have hait the nail on the proverbial head. Why on earth does any cultural institution waste time and money trying to contribute to our knowledge and understanding? In fact, come to think of it, what use is knowledge and understanding at all? I'd be interested in reading your opinions on the waste of time and money which our universities are responsible for. Time to put these money grabbing, unassessed cultual elitists in their place I think.  Rob, you are just the man to do it as you seem ideally suited.


Nelson, I blush at these plaudits!

It might be difficult as I'm not of the USA, but look, there seems to be a little vacancy in the legal department right now due to a younger man passing on to other duties in that greater court in the sky; if you could manage to generate some votes for me... after all, I do have Italian blood somewhere in my veins, so it could always be presented as continuity, making Conservatives happy if confused, and Republicans wistful for what they threw away - just as the rebelling French with their mechanical, sliding axes which, I'm reliably informed, was the science upon which Otis built his fortune.

I sense we can go places together, you and I!

Rob C
« Last Edit: February 14, 2016, 12:36:15 pm by Rob C »
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Slobodan Blagojevic

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Re: MOMA launches the Free Online Course "Seeing Through Photographs"
« Reply #9 on: February 14, 2016, 10:58:52 am »

The battle of crude vs. elegant sarcasm! ;)

Isaac

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Re: MOMA launches the Free Online Course "Seeing Through Photographs"
« Reply #10 on: February 14, 2016, 11:31:59 am »

Thank you for the course information, there's no doubt the course will be vastly more interesting than the empty mockery which followed.
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kencameron

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Re: MOMA launches the Free Online Course "Seeing Through Photographs"
« Reply #11 on: February 14, 2016, 03:18:20 pm »

Thank you for the course information, there's no doubt the course will be vastly more interesting than the empty mockery which followed.


It looks quite promising so far. Solid reading material, not too much jargon or artspeak. So far centred on MOMA's role and collection, which is fair enough given that MOMA's photography curator is running it, but may prove restrictive later. A good beginning to the discussion forums (some new opponents and allies from around the world).
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Ken Cameron
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