Universitat Internacional de Catalunya
Photojournalism
Other languages of instruction: Catalan, Spanish
Teaching staff
Email.
Introduction
The subject aims to bring us closer to press photography and audiovisual language as an element for understanding, knowledge, and interpretation of reality, providing specific skills for the production, creation, evaluation, editing, and use of journalistic images, while developing visual sensitivity.
Pre-course requirements
No.
Objectives
- To understand the foundations of visual language.
- To understand photography as a tool for informing, documenting, interpreting and representing reality.
- To identify the main narrative, expressive and compositional elements of photographic images and apply them to the construction of visual stories of journalistic interest.
- To critically analyse photographs and photojournalistic reports, taking into account their informational content, production context, intended purpose, visual treatment and social impact.
- To understand the main traditions, authors and key figures in photojournalism and photographic reportage, as well as their contributions to the development of contemporary visual language.
- To develop the ability to observe, select and represent reality according to journalistic criteria, visual sensitivity and narrative awareness.
- To apply the technical and expressive resources of photography to the production of informative images.
- To plan, document and produce photojournalistic projects suited to different subjects, contexts, formats and distribution platforms.
- To identify the relationship between image, text, context and sequencing in the construction of photojournalistic narratives.
- To understand and apply the ethical and professional principles governing the production, editing and publication of journalistic images, particularly in the representation of individuals, victims, vulnerable groups and situations involving suffering.
- To identify the limits of photographic manipulation and editing, as well as their implications for the authenticity, accuracy and credibility of informative images.
- To understand the rights and responsibilities associated with the use, publication and reuse of images, including copyright, image rights and the protection of privacy.
- To understand the changes brought about by digitalisation, social media, post-photography, artificial intelligence and synthetic images in the practice and credibility of photojournalism.
- To develop an independent, responsible professional judgement that respects human dignity, the truth of the facts and the social role of journalism.
Syllabus
1.- The camera as an apparatus: introduction to photojournalistic language.
2.- Studium, punctum, and photographic language: Barthes, Arbus, and Cartier-Bresson.
3.- Susan Sontag and Steve McCurry: the image-world and the use of color.
4.- Movement, depth of field, and authorial gaze in Sebastião Salgado and Raghu Rai.
5.- Azoulay, Capa, and Morenatti: methodology and gaze in photojournalistic reportage.
6.- Ethics in photojournalism: rights, limits, and the photography of alterity.
7.- Portraiture and light in photography.
8.- Post-photography: images in the digital age.
9.- Seminar of photo essays.
Bibliography and resources
World Press Photo Foundation.
National Press Photographers Association (NPPA).
Reuters. Handbook of Journalism.
Associated Press (AP). News Values and Principles.
Magnum Photos.