Humanist photography, the more gentle and poetic sister of photojournalism, often called Poetic realism is the focus of this course. We will explore the history of the genre from its beginnings within the social and political context of each time period up until the present times.

Together with flâneurs of the past, we will stroll the Paris streets of 1900’s Belle Époque and through the lenses of photographers – unknown and known – we will witness the golden age of the genre in the mid of the 20th century with Henri Cartier Bresson, Izis, Édouard Boubat and Willy Ronis to continue to explore the world with works of our contemporaries such as Sebastião Salgado, Mary Ellen Mark and Michael Williamson.