Helsinki Photomedia is a big (140 participants) international photography research conference which is now organized here for the first time, and will continue every second year. We hope that it will become an important venue for photography researchers.
Open keynote lectures:
Charlotte Cotton: Media and Mediums: photography’s place in culture.
Wednesday, March 28, 13:15 – 15:00, Sampo Auditorium.
This lecture considers the contemporary impact of the past forty years of advocacy for photography’s place in cultural institu- tions. This lecture considers the mitigating circumstances that shape the possible future of photography as a museological subject including the rise of amateur or crowd-sourced image-making, the popularity of ‘interdisciplinary’ working methods in cultural institutions and the impending retirement of the first generation of photography curators. Cotton explores the redundancies and potential offered at this distinctly mercurial epoch in photography’s history.
Ariella Azoulay: Un-photographs
Thursday, March 29, 17:00–18:30, Sampo Auditorium.
The encounter between the photographed persons and the person holding a camera is no less important than the one between the spectators and the photograph. These two encounters take place in two different realms. Although the link between them is far from linear – and sometimes circular – to hypothesize about its existence is extremely helpful in situations where photographs are missing. In my lecture i’ll present two types of missing images – “untaken photograph”, “unshowable photograph”.
David Bate: The Distribution of the Face
Friday, March 30, 9:00-10:30, Sampo Auditorium.
The new modes of distributing photographic images offer an expanded forum in which to re-consider the representational value of the human form. Whether it is in the different images of ‘the people’ or the ‘individual’, the face is enmeshed in a politics of visibility, and conflictual identificatory practices. Given the long and now vast history of the photographic description of human bodies and, in particular, the human face, this paper will focus on particular case studies, contemporary and historical, to draw out the critical issues of their production in relation to their circulation.
The lectures are in Sampo auditorium and open for public, while the conference workshops are only for registered participants. For more information about lecturers and the conference, see: