As a photography professional but not a fine art student, I found this course valuable in understanding the evolution of photography from its role in historic image capture to become a form of social observation and artistic interpretation and statement. Understanding the evolution of the photograph has made me more aware of what artists working in the photographic medium are trying to represent through their works.

The course is not technical. It does not teach how to compose or develop a photograph. Rather, it is a lesson on the history of photography and using photography creatively through alternative and creative interpretation.

The course is great! Very interesting contents.

Just a little suggestion: colud you make a little more interactive content, to make the learning experience even more exciting. For instance, the linking between the artists references and the museum collections while you are reading an essay, or maybe a map in which you can locate the artists´countries or the photographs locations. Even a timeline would be great, just to contextualize the different artists with some others or with other fine arts or historical events.

Thanks for your work. It was really worth the time!

Really enjoyed the videos and interviews. It helps you see photographs in a more artistic, deep way. However, I feel the course could be way more connected to the recent times: how people see photography now, how social media distorces our view of the world, how diverse the photography world has become since cameras become cheaper... so much potential to be explored!

Another criticism I have is that I wasn't motivated to read most of the suggested articles, some were very painful to read.

Overall it's a good course for the photography lovers.

Very thorough, very nice, quite entertaining and interesting.

As someone who has a lot of trouble remembering names I found the quizzes quite hard (I was not pursuing the certificate so I didn't care if I failed) but I understand that since the class and the goals are subjective while the evaluation has to be objective it matters that those questions can be unambiguous.

All in all, I feel like I did learn to look at photographs differently, and to look at the world through photographs. I'll definitely recommend it to my friends!

Provides a good overview and appreciation of photographic images and their interpretation. The course material is well presented and easy to follow. There is a good range of extended reading provided, plus suggested further reading. The early course 'assessments' are a little bit odd in places, with very specific questions about a particular photography, that, in my opinion, do not add to the overall course experience, but overall its still worth it. If there was a more advanced follow on I'd be prepared to sign up.

The only loss of a star as the course wasn't what I was expecting. I was expecting a more detailed course on how to look at and understand images. However this course takes you through much of the history and development of photography up to the present day and as to how we the public receive images and how to understand them. I have learnt to look at images much more carefully and to think more about them both as you see them and more as to their deeper meaning.

This is a very interesting course that helps you to understand how an image can be read and interpreted. The focus is very much on the veracity of photography and on the decisioning process which goes through the process of taking pictures. I really enjoyed studying for this course. However, I would expect something more in terms of revision of the final assignment. I would expect some feedback also in order to understand if my reasonings were correct.

This course has helped me to increase my knowledge in the history of photograph, particularly the last weeks, which focused on more contemporary artists and allowed me to learn and critically analyse alternative forms of working with photographic material. Although the course does not include much technical information regarding the different photographic processes, it helps the learner to understand photography in a very comprehensive way.

Very interesting and rewarding course. It has developed a lot my knowledge concerning photography's history and its different uses. As a french speaker with a good english level, I still need to say some parts were a bit difficult to understand, mostly some of the reading assignments. But don't worry, it's possible to achieve it. You definitely won't regret to have taken this course if you have a (small) interest in photography!

This Course does a really great job in opening new perspectives about photography.

Each week stands for its own and yet they combine to give you a great understanding about photographies history, techniques and artistic value.

What I did not like that much, was that pretty much reading was required and that there was so much detailed information about the museums history included. That is why I rate 4/5

Excellent choice of articles and some very inspiring videos. However, it felt like some of the connections were a little tenuous and perhaps the organisation could be improved. Overall, a very enjoyable experience and some very interesting discussions in the main assignments. Almost more interesting to see what other people thought, than responding yourself. Thank you!

Well thought out course. I learned a lot.

Some of the supplemental materials were extremely dense with professor-speak. I found my learning ground to a slow crawl from having to look up as many a 5 words in some sentences and I have a Masters Degree.

In reading some of my peers essay submissions it seems that others may have had a similar difficulty with the material.

It is really well taught, and changed my perspective of photography considerably. The only fault is, it is probably too focused on artworks owned by the MoMa. I did not entirely understand the relevance of some of those for the course, as some were debatably too abstract, but in general I think more variety and samples taken from outside MoMa-owned works would help.

To me, Seeing through Photographs is a travel through time which let you to see how photography changed and improved to become what it is today: not only a science resource, or a way to save historical data but also it's a expressive way to comunicate a point of view. I recomend it to those who are starting to study photography or for once that loves art.

Me ha parecido un curso muy completo y muy interesante para completar mis conocimientos. La única pega (para mi) ha sido que es cierto que no estaba muy familiarizado con el mundo de la fotografía, por lo que muchas cosas no las comprendía del todo bien y quizá me hubiera gustado ver algún tema introductorio más básico. Por lo demás, un curso excelente.

I found the course very interesting , useful materials to support and unique and original contributions video.

Interviews with authors well made and full of new ideas on different topics.

Excellent multiple choice for testing, but it is really hard to understand the mistakes made or know the correct answer after passing the module.

I just found that many of the readings didn't include the pictures they were talking about. Otherwise the course was incredibly helpful and enlightening. I mostly enjoyed the video material with interviews with the artists and the possibility to read and interact with other students in real-time via the forums.

Course is more not about seeing through photographs but about history of photogrpahy. I hoped to see some best masterpieces of modern photographers and the course offers just photos made on current social topics as wars, poverty etc. In whole the course is interesting but in fact could be much more fascinating

I had almost no knowledge of the field before starting this course, so it gave me a very good background of what does being a photographer actually mean, how has an understanding of a photograph been changing through years. This course is really nice for the start, I especially loved the topic "People"

Thank you again... I really enjoyed the course! Great taster of modern & contemporary photography as well as artists who have made an impact on the craft. That said, I would love to have seen & learned more about the early photographic techniques, processes & images, i.e. Daguerreotypes, etc.

I came to this course with zero knowledge of photography, hoping to explore something i thought i might be interested in. This course definitely helped me to do that; the clear structure of the course meant i was able to learn about photography easily, without any prior knowledge. :)

The course provides an in-depth immersion into the worlds of photography. Beyond the genuine interest of the different courses, the learning process itself is well thought with a good gradation and the ability to deep dive into a theme thanks to the complementary material proposed.

Great course to understand different aspects and the history of photography.

Sometimes the amount of reading is a bit difficult to read. The videos are very inspiring. The course covers various photographers. I like that this course gives you an option for the final project.

More Non-American Photographers need to be represented. I know it's an American based course but it leans ver heavily towards an American view of the photographic world. Other than that, I enjoyed the course and the lectures. I would certainly recommend this course to others.

It was a great course to get exposure to Moma's photography and hear more about some of the artists and the works. I felt it was more exploratory vs. a deep dive on the specific movements or artists. In that vein, I felt the quizzes were a little much.