Premium
Digitizing the Decisive Moment
Author(s) -
LANG DENNIS
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
visual anthropology review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.346
H-Index - 18
eISSN - 1548-7458
pISSN - 1058-7187
DOI - 10.1111/j.1548-7458.2010.01044.x
Subject(s) - studio , photography , state (computer science) , narrative , visual arts , curriculum , digital photography , sociology , art , pedagogy , computer science , literature , algorithm
This article describes the introduction of the newly emerging technology of digital photography into the curriculum of Visual Arts at Penn State University in the middle 1990s. It had never been taught at this level before and at the time represented a paradigm shift in the education of photography. The narrative profiles Gerald Lang, the professor then already nearing retirement, who challenged deeply entrenched academic axioms resistant to the technology and to any change in the instruction of photography that throughout its history had been grounded in film, chemicals, and darkrooms. The Digital Photography Studio at Penn State was destined to become the first and most sophisticated of its kind in higher education.