WELCOME TO J412/DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY

Welcome to J412/Documentary Photography.

This is a story-telling, project-oriented class. It’s main focus (!) is developing visual story-telling techniques, evolving a personal style, and gaining increased proficiency in using the physical tools (camera, lights, flash, Photoshop, WordPress web site) of your profession.

All Assignments, Schedules, Papers and Announcements will be found on your Canvas site.

This class requires personal discipline. It only meets once a week. This puts the burden on you to develop the main tool of doing photography: doing photography. You will need to ALWAYS have a camera on you and to use it every day. You will have Pop Peeks to ensure that happens.

Have a great semester. This class is very liberating in that we spend 1/3rd of the semester out of the classroom. As with any form of freedom it comes with a burden of responsibility to a) Stay engaged, b) Put in more effort than required, c) Be analytical in evaluating yourself, and, d) Interacting with class mates and instructor in a spirit of inquiry and discovery.

Best wishes to you all. Have a great semester.

About Author

Bruce Berman

Professor Bruce Berman has been a photographer for many decades and a teacher for a few. He started out in Chicago as a street photographer shooting riots for UPI, AP, The Chicago Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor. Mostly interested in photographing people his photography eventually morphed into the idea of doing documentary photography although at the time he didn’t know there was a name for it.
On an assignment, he got lost in the desert and ended up in El Paso and has lived three blocks from Mexico for over forty years.
He has covered the border, northern Mexico, West Texas and the southern United States ever since.
Now concentrating exclusively on documentary photography -and teaching- he has found himself back at his roots.
Teaching at a university has provided Berman with opportunities to do research and work with a new generation of photographers. He calls them “the next great generation of shooters.”

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