By LUIS GONZALEZ
Photography has becoming an increasingly popular medium for young artists and the the Museum of Modern Art has taken notice: It is offering free online photography classes.
Hosted by the online course website coursera.com, the six-week Seeing Through Photographs course is broken up into two to three sections per week. Topics range from documentary photography to the construction of photography narratives, or photography storytelling.
“This course aims to address the gap between seeing and truly understanding photographs by introducing a diversity of ideas, approaches, and technologies that inform their making,” according to the museum’s description.
The class, taught by Sarah Meister, curator for the Department of Photography at the MoMa, is a welcome alternative to interested artists who cannot afford comparable classes on photography, some of which can run upwards of $1,000.
Shaira Chaer, a New York-based photographer who has held several exhibitiosn this year, expressed gratitude for the free courses, “I think it’s a great intro to the actual art of photography,” Chaer said. “Like, yeah, we all pretty much have access to some form of it through smart phones, but that doesn’t necessarily connect others to what it is exactly because it’s so much more than just pressing a button and capturing an image.”
During the six weeks students will look at photographs in the museum’s collection and analyze them for their expression, symbology and meaning.
Enrollment in the course is free but MoMa is offering a certification upon completion for $50.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.