You are warmly invited to Professor Joanna Zylinska's inaugural lecture
'Nonhuman Photography'
celebrating the 35th anniversary of the Media and Communications Department
11 March 17.30-18.30 Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre, Goldsmiths
Living in the media-saturated society of the 21st century has become tantamount to being photographed on an almost constant basis. Our identity is repeatedly constituted and confirmed by the ongoing flow of photo streams on our mobile phones, tablets and social media platforms such as Facebook and Tumblr, not to mention the thousands of security cameras invisibly registering our image when we pass through city centres, shopping malls and airports. This photographic process is largely automatized: it is subject to the logic and vision of the machine. Even the supposed human-centric decisions with regard to WHAT to photograph and HOW to do it are often reactions to events quickly unfolding in front of the photographer’s eyes, or responses to pre-established visual categories: landscape, portraiture, play, war. Indeed, in many areas of our lives – not just photography but also shopping, driving and even walking – we execute a function of a pre-programmed apparatus, choosing from the range of possibilities.
She will suggest in her talk that human-driven photography – involving an act of conscious looking through a viewfinder or at an LCD screen – is only one small part of what takes place in the field of photography, even though it is often made to stand in for photography as such. She will also propose the notion of “the photographic condition”, which includes the existent images as well all the other virtual photographs that could potentially be, or have been, taken. This conceptual expansion of photography beyond the human and the recognition of our machinic kinship will allow her to raise some political and ethical questions about the self-possessive individualism of the human eye and the privatisation of vision in late capitalism.
The lecture will be followed by a reception (at about 6.30pm) in the Staff Dining Room, RHB.
RSVP to the Warden’s Office via email [log in to unmask], via telephone 020 7919 7033 or by registering at .
Location: Whitehead Building. Ian Gulland Lecture Theatre.
Time: 11 March 2014, 17:30 - 18:30
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