Since its invention, photography has struggled to depict the truth.
Early photographers attempted to represent the world as truthfully as
possible. With contemporary life putting a camera in everyone’s pocket,
and the digital capabilities of Photoshop and analog photography, the
medium is in a state of untruthful flux.
At EOU, students in photography learn to break the mould of the
arm’s-length Facebook self-portrait and explore photography as a medium
for meaningful expression. Using traditional black and white darkroom
techniques, students are immersed in the oldest aspects of the medium.
Taking digital and studio photography allows students to explore
manipulation through computers and light, respectively. The commercial
and artistic elements of the spectrum of photography are stressed every
step of the way.
Understanding photography also requires studying the artists of the past
that brought the medium to where it is today. From the earliest work by
Daguerre, through the modernists and Edward Weston, to the works of the
Starn Brothers and Sally Mann, EOU students research photographs obscure
and famous, horrifying and beautiful, gaining an understanding of
history, art, and photography’s truths and lies.
Above all, EOU students learn the power that comes with aiming a camera
at the world and at themselves.
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