Core Curriculum

Core Curriculum: Writings on Photography is the long-awaited collection of essays, reviews, and lectures—some of which have gained a cult following online—by Tod Papageorge, one of the most influential voices in photography today. As the Walker Evans Professor of Photography at Yale University School of Art, Papageorge has shaped the work of generations of artist/photographers, and earned a reputation as an unusually eloquent guide to the work of many important figures in twentieth-century photography.

Among the artists Papageorge discusses in this essential volume are Atget, Brassaï, Robert Frank (with Walker Evans), Robert Adams, and his close friend, Garry Winogrand. The book also includes texts examining photography’s relationship to poetry, and how the medium’s early technologies led to the creation of the self-conscious twentieth-century photographer/artist. Among the previously unpublished pieces are an unfinished poem on Sontag’s On Photography, a profile of Josef Koudelka, and a commencement speech delivered at Yale in 2004.

Core Curriculum also includes interviews with Papageorge, sharing his energetic observations on his own photographic work, and on the art as a whole.