Paper instructions:
In 1250 words, you will explore one or two ways in which photography informs and influences people’s perceptions of themselves and others, and of the social, cultural, physical places to which they belong or have little access.  What does someone’s camera tell you about the world in which you live? And yours theirs? In what places and under what circumstances does one’s camera do its hiding and seeking? Among other things, this assignment invites you to think critically and ethically about why the camera lens€“yours or someone else’s€“tends to capture certain people, objects, and places in predictable and culturally-specific ways, while failing or refusing to include others into its field of vision.  What selective processes are at work at the conscious or subconscious level? What do these idiocyncratic practices of photography tell us about who we are, what we think, and how we live, in isolation and in relation to others?

Using Susan Sontag’s essay On Photography, the documentary Smash His Camera, and the website Street Photography http://www.street-photographers.com as guiding resources for this assignment, I hope you will have fun with Essay III while thinking critically and ethically about the everyday practice and politics of photography.