ART 248: “Photography and the Making of the Modern World” explores key moments in the history of photography from its inventions in the early nineteenth century to its omnipresence in the twenty-first, with attention to underrepresented groups and unknown makers. Professor Monica Bravo investigated photography with students as a product of collaborations, networks, and systems rather than of select privileged makers.

“Although I've taught various iterations of a survey history of photography over the years, both the speed of the Princeton semester and the excellence of the students surprised me as a new faculty member,” said Bravo. “I have been consistently impressed by students' abilities to spend time in deep looking with one another, to grapple with the medium as it intersects with difficult histories (including colonialism, racist pseudosciences, and criminal justice) as well as aesthetic debates, and to engage in hands-on learning from formal debates to the creation of photograms and photocollages modeled off of avant-garde exemplars.”

The class followed photography from the debate surrounding what qualifies as its first iteration to its use as a political tool, piece of legal evidence, technological achievement, and, of course, art.

"Professor Bravo resists the history of photography that is framed as a series of successive technological developments," said art & archaeology major Henry Moses ’25. “Narratives like those lose a lot of detail in the name of an easy through line. A lot of time was spent early on in the course in picking through narratives about the invention of photography. We worked through a number of questions that sought to complicate a simple narrative about the origin of this momentous technology," he said. "This intentional complication of the narrative that is often packaged as the history of photography has been the main takeaway of the course for me.”

Electrical and computer engineering major Mirabelle Weinbach '25 was intrigued to learn about external factors influencing photography’s trajectory. “I've been most surprised by the discussions we've had about how photography has responded to global events throughout history and in the present,” she said. “I would expect that the subject of photographs would reflect current events but had never considered how things like wars or shifting economies would influence the chemicals/materials available and therefore change the way the art form was able to develop.”

Moses and Weinbach agree that the class visits to photography exhibitions and Princeton’s Special Collections were highlights of the course. “Getting to see the historical photographs we're learning about in person brings the material to life,” said Weinbach.

On one trip, the class was treated to our tour of the exhibition Art about Art at Princeton University Art Museum’s gallery Art on Hulfish by its curator, Ronni Baer. “A key premise of the course is that photography does not exist in isolation from other media,” said Bravo, “and here we got to see contemporary artists working in photography, video, and performance responding across time to Early Modern painting.” Students benefited from hearing Baer’s considerations in developing the show and learning about the goals and the practical considerations of museum work. 

Students also experienced making versions of the artform themselves. First, they created sunprints, arranging objects on sunprint paper and allowing the November sun to lighten the paper around the objects, capturing a composition of silhouettes.  They also used magazine cuttings to assemble photo collages in the style of artists they had studied.

Along with guest lectures, field trips, and hands-on workshops, a collaborative component of the course allowed students to teach and learn from one another; delving into an aspect of each week’s topic to apply critical and cultural analysis, find comparative works, and expand on bibliographical references, students ultimately created a handbook distributed to all course participants which will also advise future students of the course. 

Bravo conceived of this assignment as “an authentic means of having students teach each other another, research-driven level of photographic history, based on their interests.”  This results, says Bravo, is students making “unique contributions to a public-facing group project, enacting the individual-collective dynamic the course explores.”

“Professor Bravo strikes the perfect balance between teaching us about the technical elements of photo history and the artistic/analytical elements. It's also been great how participatory the class is,” said Weinbach. “I'm able to learn from my peers who come from all different academic departments.”

“I’m proud of the robust culture we created of asking questions—from the clarifying to the technical to the more philosophical, even when we had a guest lecturer—within a lecture course that in many ways came to resemble a seminar,” said Bravo. “This to me is an indicator of intellectual curiosity and critical thinking: the key tenets of humanistic education.”

Usually immersed in STEM courses, Weinbach concluded “My main takeaway is how important it is to take classes simply out of interest. I'm a B.S.E. student, so it's been lovely getting to exercise a different part of my brain in this class than in my major classes. I would recommend this course to anyone!”

“I believe photography is the most important invention of the 19th century. It is the basis for all film and video technology, structures our understanding of distant events, and can even produce identity through official (as well as) informal channels. Today, with social media and AI, photography impacts our understanding of the world in unprecedented ways—but then, it always has.” —Monica Bravo