This course will provide an overview of the world’s leading image makers; the artistic talent working in exclusive communities documenting today’s contemporary culture. Students will investigate all types of image-making with a particular focus on the relations between art and commerce, photography and film. Mapping out the best examples of these art forms, we will see how key players practicing them communicate about, and reflect, our times. Starting with the years of creative resurgence following WWII, we will see how creative talent migrated to the commercial hub of New York City; how in this “new world” artists, ground-breaking curators, and art dealers pushed the boundaries of what could be considered art leading to the 1980s era of excess and beyond to today’s creative scene. Having the privileged perspective of Paris, we will look at how photography and film, deployed in advertising, evolved to become an emotive means of communicating via inter-disciplinary collaborations intermingling graphic design, fashion, the performing arts and the entertainment industry, and even architecture into thrilling living examples of benchmark historic creativity: visionary images with long lasting international influence. We will examine those who continue to break ground via risk-taking artistic practices: the leading international historic, through to contemporary, image-makers. Students will develop a better understanding, appreciation, and discerning ability to be inspired by these cliques of overlapping highly talented individuals working in the world’s most creative and influential industries