Category Archives: U3AC Photography Courses

Reading Photographs – U3AC 2022-23

Posted on April 12, 2022 by Brian

I’ve put forward a proposal for a course, ‘Reading Photographs’, at the Cambridge U3A in spring 2023. What do you see when you look at a photograph?  What is it of?  Is this the same as what it’s about? Is … Continue reading →

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Five Facets of Photography – Controversy in Photography

Posted on March 24, 2022 by Brian

The Cambridge U3A class met yesterday for Five Facets of Photography –Controversy in Photography, the last in the series.  The previous classes had not shied away from controversy, embracing as they did issues such photography as art, the depiction of … Continue reading →

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Five Facets of Photography – Controversy in Photography: Jan Saudek

Posted on March 23, 2022 by Brian

During his life in communist Czechoslovakia, Jan was labelled by the totalitarian regime as a pornographer.  He was considered a disturbed artist and was oppressed by authorities.  He lived in poverty using the only room in his basement as his … Continue reading →

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Five Facets of Photography – Controversy in Photography: Lee Miller

Posted on March 21, 2022 by Brian

During the Second World War, Lee Miller was a war correspondent for Vogue covering the London Blitz, the liberation of Paris, and the opening of concentration camps at Buchenwald and Dachau.  She took this picture scene of one of three people lying dead in an abandoned office at … Continue reading →

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Five Facets of Photography – Controversy in Photography: Ethics

Posted on March 18, 2022 by Brian

In December 1971 newly independent Bangladesh guerrillas in Dacca used bayonets to torture and kill four men suspected of collaborating with Pakistani militiamen.  Aside from the morality of what is in effect a summary execution, a controversy surrounding the photos … Continue reading →

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Five Facets of Photography – Women and Photography

Posted on March 16, 2022 by Brian

The Cambridge U3A class met for Five Facets of Photography – Women and Photography today.  The first three classes included work by 15 women photographers (more will be included in the fifth class). Today we took a more focused look … Continue reading →

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Five Facets of Photography – Women in Photography: Alice Austen

Posted on March 15, 2022 by Brian

Alice Austen was a photographer and is recognised as a significant figure in LGBT history, breaking with convention to live with her partner, Gertrude Tate, and making images that subvert gender roles.  Violet Ward published Bicycling for Ladies in 1896. … Continue reading →

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Five Facets of Photography – Women in Photography: Grace Robertson

Posted on March 12, 2022 by Brian

Despite the fact that her socially committed approach to photography chimed with the way that Picture Post celebrated working-class culture and the welfare state, the magazine initially refused to accept Grace Robertson’s proposals for what were seen as ‘women’s subjects’. … Continue reading →

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Five Facets of Photography – Travellers and Photography: Norman Lewis

Posted on March 10, 2022 by Brian

Norman Lewis is best-known as a travel writer, with books such as Naples ‘44, A Dragon Apparent and Golden Earth.  He’s less well-known as a keen photographer, owner of the R G Lewis chain of photographic shops and post war … Continue reading →

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Five Facets of Photography – Travellers and Photography

Posted on March 9, 2022 by Brian

The Cambridge U3A class met for Five Facet of Photography – Travellers and Photography today.  The first two classes looked at the general development and role of photography and its importance in understanding the world and our place in it.  … Continue reading →

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Five Facets of Photography – Travellers and Photography: Watson and Kaye

Posted on March 8, 2022 by Brian

The People of India: a series of photographic illustrations, with descriptive letterpress, of the races and tribes of Hindustan, was published by the India Museum, London, 1868-1875.  It comprised eight volumes containing 450 images made by Watson and Kaye as … Continue reading →

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Five Facets of Photography – Travellers and Photography: Francis Bedford

Posted on March 7, 2022 by Brian

Francis Bedford (1815-94) was one of England’s most prominent landscape photographers.  Following the death of Prince Albert in 1861, his eldest son, Prince Albert (later King Edward VII), invited Bedford to photograph his extensive tour of Greece and the Middle East, the first royal tour … Continue reading →

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Five Facets of Photography – Photographs that Changed the World

Posted on March 3, 2022 by Brian

The Cambridge U3A class met for Five Facet of Photography – Photographs that Changed the World yesterday.  This built on the first class, which established the pervasive capacity of the medium.  There is any number of famous and recognisable photographs … Continue reading →

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Five Facets of Photography – Photographs that Changed the World: Rosalind Franklin Photo 51

Posted on February 28, 2022 by Brian

In May 1952 Rosalind Franklin photographed her fifty-first X-ray diffraction pattern of deoxyribosenucleic acid, or DNA.  It revealed information about DNA´s three-dimensional structure by displaying the way a beam of X-rays scattered off a pure fibre of DNA. Maurice Wilkins, … Continue reading →

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Five Facets of Photography – Photographs that Changed the World: Rontgen’s X-Ray

Posted on February 25, 2022 by Brian

A medical X-ray photograph of Anna Bertha Röntgen hand made by her husband Wilhelm in 1895. The discovery of x-rays won Wilhelm the first Nobel Prize ever granted for physics in 1901. His breakthrough quickly went into use around the world, … Continue reading →

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