PHOTOGRAPHIES
Routledge Journals, Taylor and Francis
Issue 1, Winter/Spring 2008

Photographies seeks to construct a new agenda for theorising photography 
as a heterogeneous medium that is changing in an ever more dynamic 
relation to all aspects of contemporary culture.

Editors: 	
David Bate (University of Westminster)
Sarah Kember (Goldsmiths College, University of London)
Martin Lister (University of the West of England)
Liz Wells (University of Plymouth)


Aims:

•	To establish a sustained and dynamic forum for the development of 
the history and theory of photography 
•	To consider new frameworks for thinking and addressing questions 
arising from digital technologies and economic, political and cultural 
change
•	To examine contemporary uses and currencies of the photographic 
within local and global contexts
•	To identify, develop and discuss emergent critical debates and 
practices
•	To publish work in the humanities and social sciences which has a 
bearing upon our understanding of photography thereby locating debate 
within a wider community


Scope
There is more and more photography! It follows that there is a need to 
foster debate and reflective dialogue on practices, contexts, and 
ideological implications of contemporary developments. Photographies will 
construct a new agenda for the study and theory of photographic practices 
which is alert to photography’s changing contexts and meanings.

Most scholars of photography would assent to there being only 
photographies rather than an essential ‘photography’. Such photographies, 
the technologies, discourses and investments which shape them, and their 
various and conflicting histories, have been powerfully at work in many 
areas of social, political, economic and cultural life since the mid-19th 
century. Photographies are utilised and transformed in a wide range of 
forms and sites. Fields of activity are diverse: legal, documentary, 
scientific & medical, art practices, personal & domestic, commercial 
(including fashion and advertising), political, of the person, the land, 
the cosmos, the molecule, of events and places. Photography, whether 
analogue or digital, material or virtual, printed or electronically 
networked, abounds.  Photographies explores issues and practices across a 
range of fields with a view to better understanding the import of the 
photographic image in the 21st century.

The 1970s/80s were taken up with political and structuralist/post-
structuralist debates which have framed something approaching an orthodoxy 
within photography theory. In the 1990s much critical thought was 
preoccupied by the import of the digital. Debates passed through 
speculations on the ‘death of photography’, the nature of the post-
photographic and a photography after photography as a liberation from the 
always contested referential nature of photography, of the afterlife of 
photography as an ideological realist rhetoric, and as the antecedent of 
the panoptic and spectacular machinic assemblages of contemporary visual 
culture. 

Arguably critical scholarly work on photography is constrained by the 
legacy of these theoretical debates of the late twentieth century. Some 
theorists continue to seek the elusive ‘photographic’ and its essence in 
the index, the punctum, subjectivity, and the experience and technology of 
modernity. On the other hand, there are those who want to address only the 
present and future, formulating the impact of the digital as ‘post-
photographic’ and transcending photography as previously constituted. Yet, 
throughout its history, photography has constantly been re-invented, the 
new becoming complexly inter-woven with the old as new uses and practices 
emerge. Photographies aims to construct a new agenda for theorising the 
photographic, one which is alert to  changing contexts and meanings, and 
to the unprecedented scale and diversity of sites of image production, 
reproduction and consumption now.  It will seek diversity of focus through 
fostering a wide range of themes, methodologies and contexts of 
exploration.


In summary
Photographies seeks to construct a new agenda for theorising the 
photographic, one which is alert to photography’s changing contexts and 
meanings, and to the unprecedented scale and diversity of sites of image 
production, reproduction and consumption now. It aims to further develop 
the history and theory of photography, considering new frameworks for 
thinking and addressing questions arising from the present context of 
technological, economic, political and cultural change.  It will 
investigate the contemporary condition and currency of the photographic 
within local and global contexts. The editors seek research papers and 
innovative visual essays, shorter papers engaging new debates, review 
essays evaluating publications, cultural events, key developments, 
exhibitions and conferences 


Practicalities

The journal will be published twice a year in the first instance 

Contributions will take the form of:

•	Research papers and innovative visual essays (6000-8000 words)
•	Shorter papers engaging new debates (circa 4000 words)
•	Reflective review essays evaluating publications, cultural events, 
key developments, exhibitions and conferences 

N.B. Photographic illustrations will normally be reproduced in black and 
white. (Permissions clearances are the responsibility of authors).

Papers will be peer-reviewed following the usual procedures. 

Papers and proposals should be sent to Photographies, c/o Liz Wells, 
Faculty of Arts, Scott Building, University of Plymouth, Drake Circus, 
Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK, [log in to unmask]

Contributors are advised to contact the editors with proposals for 
reflective review essays in advance of writing/submission (to avoid 
duplication).