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

4.8
stars
4,302 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.

AD

Dec 25, 2019

This is a really great way to get a beginners academic insight into photography, really interesting video and written content. I learned a lot and enjoyed studying again, thank you MoMA and Coursera!

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926 - 950 of 1,112 Reviews for Seeing Through Photographs

By Flavio E

Jun 27, 2016

Amazing!

By Paola R

Jun 26, 2016

Awesome!

By Valeria M

May 5, 2016

Amazing!

By Sandra A

Mar 5, 2023

amazing

By Renzo E M S

Jun 5, 2022

LOVE IT

By Rolando G G M

May 24, 2017

Amazing

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 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.