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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Seeing Through Photographs by The Museum of Modern Art

4.8
stars
4,421 ratings

About the Course

Taking, sharing, and viewing photographs has become second nature for many of us. 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. You’ll explore the meaning of pictures and reconsider photography’s role in our visual culture. Look closely at 100 photographs from MoMA’s collection, going behind the scenes of the Museum and into artists’ studios through videos and audio interviews. Gain new perspectives on the ways photography has been used throughout the medium’s history: as a means of artistic expression, a tool for science and exploration, an instrument of documentation, a way to tell stories and record histories, and a mode of communication and critique....

Top reviews

AQ

Mar 8, 2016

Seeing Through Photographs has given me a whole new way of looking at my own and other peoples' work. So many aspects, details and points of view, the world of photography now seems even more amazing.

EE

Jun 2, 2019

It was very insightful, and a good thing is they offered quizzes and other full content, which some other free courses do not, which really helps learning. Hope to go for other courses under them. :)

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951 - 975 of 1,135 Reviews for Seeing Through Photographs

By Angélica R

Dec 2, 2016

genial!

By Grau G

Aug 12, 2016

great!!

By Eren J

Feb 19, 2016

amazing

By Adrian A

Oct 23, 2019

Great!

By Jesús B B

Dec 28, 2016

Genial

By Massimiliano M

Mar 31, 2016

Hallo,

By Andres M

Feb 25, 2016

Great!

By Greydi N L R

Sep 9, 2022

GOOD

By Jaime M

May 30, 2020

great

By Adrián M S G

Feb 28, 2016

Great

By 横塚爽海

Nov 22, 2024

good

By Ewomazino E

Apr 10, 2024

Good

By Jegatheesh R

May 6, 2020

Good

By Rolando G

Feb 22, 2016

NIce

By Susan A

Aug 1, 2022

By Michel V

Jun 19, 2016

A

By Barbara w

Jan 10, 2017

I would give this course 4 1/2 stars. The course material was very well organized and the examples provided were for the most part very topical. the weight of the peer review at the end of the course is too high. Your peers have roughly the same knowledge as you do when you submit your assignment. They are being asked to assign a value to your submission which is really coarse...as there are only 3 choices 1 a pass, 2 not quite and 3 a fail. Considering you have done all the course work and quizzes up to the end it seems quite arbitrary.

On another note I would like to suggest a project which became a book. All too often today we view photographs in every moment of our lives but we are unaware of the the face of those creators and their iconic works. MoMA's course seems a perfect opportunity to somehow introduce the subject. the book is Behind Photographs - Archiving Photographic Legends by Tim Mantoani and MarkMurphy.

BEHIND PHOTOGRAPHS: ARCHIVING PHOTOGRAPHIC LEGENDS began as the personal quest of photographer Tim Mantoani to document and preserve noted photographers together with their images. "We have come to a point in history where we are losing both photographic recording mediums and iconic photographers,” Mantoani comments. "While many people are familiar with iconic photographs, the general public has no idea of who created them. This book became a means to do that, the photographer and their photograph in one image.”

By Carlos M

Apr 6, 2016

Great course. I have a few suggestions to make it even better:

Pros:

Videos on artists are just amazing, good quality and full of interesting information.

Organization of the modules is wonderful, it makes a lot of sense.

Optional readings are really interesting, it would be difficult for people like me from undeveloped countries, to get that kind of documentation from a prestigious museum.

Doing exams is a good way to refresh all you read on the module.

Expositors are well versed and interesting, kudos on that.

The slides sections are well designed and the format is wonderful to read on either a computer or a cellphone.

Cons:

Better scans, some of them were difficult to read, pdfs should be formatted to fit a single page in full screen. Its almost impossible to read from a cellphone.

Some of the multiple choice questions on the exams were just too much, all due respect, edX continuous examination works in a more efficient way.

I hope MoMA do another interesting course on photography, perhaps specific subjects like landscape and street photography, and all the interesting subjects around them. I'm really glad to have found this, congratulations and thanks for putting this together.

Carlos Mora

ritocs@gmail.com

By Roberto M

Jul 22, 2016

This is a good course on photography from an important institution that will show you and teach you the several aspects and topics of photography, from document to artwork. Made of six modules, each focused on a specific aspect, it provides different media to learn from, like interviews, critics and overviews, both in video and writings. All aspects are of photography are necessarily condensed and sometimes basic but many different links and suggestion on further material is given for those who want to get deeper. If you like photography, if you want to understand it better, or even if you are just curious about this medium which is today in everybody's lives, you will hardly be disappointed by this course. The only negative aspects for me were that sometimes the material was difficult to read and that sometimes subtitles were not very good, but this latter is a problem only if you are not an English motherlanguage. Instrucions on grading and final assignment aren't so easy and well them and this is a possible improvement for the organisation.

By Deleted A

Mar 8, 2016

This course has been very interesting, however I believe that the mix of genre has been somewhat limited. While I respect the artistic choices and talents of all artists, I feel that the discussions in the videos for week 6 lack substance: picking up litter, photographing it, and arranging it for installation display strikes me as neither aesthetic nor documentary photography, unless the artist's message is in documenting our 'throw-away' society and highlighting the importance of 'recycling' for the benefit of the environment. Such messages did not appear to arise in my opinion. The discussion about architectural preservation was worthwhile but not focused. The interviewer(s) concerned could have assisted by asking relevant questions of the artist(s) for the benefit of an audience with varied photographic interests. My argument here does not involve the earlier weeks relating to the history of photography and the preservation of images for future generations which were excellent.

By ALAN

May 21, 2020

This is an excellent course, which opens up areas of knowledge not encountered before.

Three issues to bear in mind:

1. The content does not include enough 19th Century photography, European or American. Relating concepts to the origins and development of the medium is surely vital to a thorough understanding of contemporary issues.

2. The sections of Additional Readings and Required Readings some of the links open up *pdf files with stupidly small print that more many people is too hard to read. These files should be converted to Word documents and saved with a readable print size. Otherwise it make some documents inaccessable to some learners.

3. The estimated work times for each week bear no relation to the time required to study the additional readings. 2hrs per week is more like 6hrs per week to do the course properly.

By Bill D

Jan 28, 2017

A very fine course and an interesting and stimulating learning experience. The materials were great - based as they were on the vast archival resources of MOMA's photographic department. These were deployed to provide a quality course. It was particularly interesting to be introduced to photographers and work with which I was previously unfamilar - 'Evidence' and 'Carnival Strippers' in particular spring to mind. My only quibble was with the forums - which were ok, but compared to other coursera courses seemed to lack the engagement of tutors to pose searching questions and provide quality feedback. For some reason the forums were a little flat and didn't appear to stimulate e a high level of engagement . Other than this quibble, though, a hugely enjoyable and worthwhile course. Thank You!

By Lorenzo B

Feb 28, 2017

I enrolled the course expecting a little more vision on "how to read" a photograph, a composition, although thanks to the Curator I now understood that the context (time, environment, history, …) is important to that purpose.

I appreciated the competence with which she treated each subject and the interesting perspective given to the various modules. It gave me a new viewpoint in what photography really is.

Good videos and interviews made it easier to understand.

Some readings from the required and additional resources were difficult because of the concepts.

I personally found some topics (module 5 and 6) a bit abstract and difficult to follow, but I put myself into it to expand my knowledge and open my mind.

By Dennis W

Mar 29, 2022

I appreciate the breadth of the course, which covers a lot of the history as well as the techniques and underlying conceptualizing that went into this nice selection of photographers and their work. The instructor is great; she takes a casual but studied approach to photography-as-art, which renders her instructional style more palatable (to me) than someone who might take themselves and their expertise a bit more seriously. I was inspired by the course to branch out with my photography, to experiment with different techniques and approaches. That was the main reason I took the course, and I think it succeeded fairly well in pushing me to a more open-minded approach to the work I am doing.

By Asha H

May 20, 2020

I love this course. It definitely took some time to get into the groove of taking an online course but it was great and very insightful and meaningful to my career at an editorial stylist who works with photographers every day and someone who also takes pictures themselves and working hard to improve my skills as a photographer. The only reason that I wouldn't give this course or the other course I am taking 5 stars is because I think once you take the quiz at the end of every week the correct answers should be shown to the learner so you can see what the you answered (the incorrect answer) and see what it should have been. Thank you MoMA