*Humanising Photography*
Durham Centre for Advanced Photography Studies
(www.dur.ac.uk/DCAPS/)
Durham University, UK
25-27 September 2009
In the early twenty-first century, the still photographic image
continues to be one of the central visual technologies of
humanitarianism: from the all-too familiar images documenting successive
waves of famine and disease, through those that bear witness to the
action and destruction of war, to the photo ops staged in the arena of
struggles for human rights. Disseminated across a range of media and
spanning geographical distances and cultural divides, photographic
images are presented for everyday consumption, produced by practitioners
often working explicitly in the name of 'humanity' and testifying to
acts of injustice and states of destitution and abjection.
And yet: this humanitarian deployment of photography has been vigorously
attacked from a variety of angles. The contemporary moment is plagued by
anxieties concerning an oversaturated visual sphere and attendant
compassion fatigue, a state of anaesthesia said to blunt the
photograph's political and ethical efficacy. Humanitarian photography is
predicated on humanist principles even after more than half a century
spent interrogating and deconstructing the discourses of humanism.
Within photography theory, not only have there been sustained attempts
to dismantle ontological notions of photographic reference, but
documentary has been pilloried as a practice that is profoundly
implicated in the perpetuation of liberal capitalism. Despite all this,
however, the fact that photographic images of human suffering,
deprivation and also resilience continue to circulate and be deployed
suggests an ongoing belief in their power to affect and ultimately to
effect change.
'Humanising photography' is a single-track conference that aims to
establish a creative forum in which to reflect on the political,
ethical, historical, and aesthetic questions thrown up by the persistent
presence of such images in the context of humanitarian discourses. It
will bring practitioners into dialogue with scholars working in the
academic fields of visual culture studies broadly construed and
representatives from humanitarian organizations. Whilst we welcome
papers exploring salient contemporary issues and case studies, we
especially encourage those that examine other contexts and histories
that have been occluded in the contemporary geopolitical moment, in
addition to theoretically-oriented reflections.
Possible areas for consideration might include, but are not restricted
to:
What modes of humanist photography might still be valid in the
twenty-first century?
What are the histories of humanist photography?
What are the tropes, figures and other rhetorical devices at play in
such photography and what are their effects?
What is the political and emotional work that is done by this mode of
photographic display and does it work?
What are the modes of appeal of such images, whom do they address and on
what terms?
How do the modes of circulation and display impact on modalities of
affect and effectivity?
Instructions for submission of abstracts
Please send 500-word abstracts for 30-minute conference presentations
and a brief biographical note (maximum 5 lines), together with
affiliation and contact details to: [log in to unmask]
Deadline for abstract submission: 19 December 2008.
Notification: by 5 January 2009.
Professor Jonathan Long
Director of Learning and Teaching
School of Modern Languages and Cultures
University of Durham
Elvet Riverside
Durham DH1 3JT
UK
0044 (0)191 3343439
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