PROGRAMME & ABSTRACTS
10.00-10:30 Registration & Refreshments
10:30-10:45 Welcome & Introductory Remarks (Sara Dominici, IMCC/University of Westminster)
10.45-12.30: “Researching Photography” Panel (Chair: Sara Dominici, IMCC/University of Westminster)
12.30-1.30 Lunch
1.30-3.30: “Writing Photography” Panel (Chair: John Beck, IMCC/University of Westminster)
3.30-4.00 Coffee
4.00-5.30 “Exhibiting Photography” Panel: (Chair: Peter Ride, IMCC/University of Westminster)
5.30-6.30 Drinks Reception
ABSTRACTS
Christopher Morton (Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford)
Collecting, Networking, Exchanging: a case study in researching nineteenth-century anthropological photography
This presentation is a case study in researching the sources of nineteenth-century ethnographic photography that was disseminated throughout European academic networks from the 1860s onwards. The story centres on the mysterious figure of Julius Ferdinand Berini, a Swiss or German immigrant to Australia in the early 1860s, and whose significance has been completely overlooked in histories of early photography collecting in Australia. As this presentation will make clear, Berini was the major source for Australian Aboriginal portraits published in the most significant European publication of anthropological photographs in the nineteenth century, C.W. and F. Dammann’s Anthropologisch-ethnologisches Album, published as folios in Hamburg in the mid 1870s. On the one hand Berini was, it appears, a medical charlatan and serial liar about his travel exploits. Yet on the other he was also seemingly an enthusiastic natural and cultural historian who frequently contributed his thoughts and collections to society meetings within the German speaking educated elite. In 1872 he returned to Europe and lectured to credulous gatherings in London and Berlin, and it is likely that his photograph collection was at this point copied and published by the Dammanns under the auspices of the anthropology society in Berlin. The excavation of Berini’s role is an important case study towards a fuller understanding of the collection, networking, exchange, and dissemination of ethnographic imagery in nineteenth-century Europe.
Kelley Wilder (De Montfort University)
Catalogue of Absences: researching photography (in) archives
If photographs are everywhere, why is it so hard to find them? This talk addresses the kinds of questions we ask of archives, and of catalogues, to find what we want. Photographs are supposedly everywhere, which makes them frustratingly difficult to research. A lack of photographic knowledge, inconsistent or missing metadata, and invisibility are problems put forward to explain difficult research experiences, but this talk addresses as well the kinds of questions we ask about photographs and how questioning our questions might elicit completely different results in researching photographs.
Benedict Burbridge (University of Sussex)
Photography inside the Neoliberal University
My current research develops a politico-economic analysis of contemporary photographic culture. Rather than address the depiction of political subject matter within photographs, I examine the political economies of photography: focusing on the production, distribution and consumption of diverse imagery in terms of labour, profit and power. Such a framework, I suggest, opens interesting possibilities for the study of contemporary art: highlighting an emerging area of interest for artists while also pointing to the significant blind-spots those projects sometimes contain. While a number of artists have turned their critical sights towards relationships between diverse photographic cultures and neoliberalism, only rarely do those projects explore their own immediate relationship to the political and economic system they critique and oppose. In this paper I explore the implications of the situation for my own research, suggesting that an expanded definition of photography’s political and economic contexts necessarily encompasses an academic environment increasingly shaped by free-market ideology.
Karen Shepherdson (Canterbury Christ Church University)
Writing Photography at the Edge
This visual presentation considers how written and presented text can re-shape and re-member the photograph. Re-membering is a slightly ironic concept that attempts to encapsulate the processes of production, curation and writing, synthesising often disparate parts into a (new) meaningful whole. I will consider what is for me, the binding relationship between practice, curation and the writing of photography and by drawing upon examples made at the seaside – right at UK’s edge - reflect upon this potentially dynamic interchange*. In doing this I shall examine how commercial shoreline imagery comes steeped in convention and expectation of what such photography should present and as a consequence can readily perpetuate mythologisations of coastal lives. Such edited pasts are ones where it is all too easy to deny a broader contextualisation of chronic underfunding, limited opportunities, particularly for the working class, with elitism and class boundaries firmly fixed. Thus, this presentation considers how through contemporary practice/curation/writing we can begin to re-member and reshape ‘sunny seaside snaps’, resisting the seduction of nostalgia whilst still fully acknowledging the visual and textual richness such collections provide.
*Examples taken from the South East Archive of Seaside (SEAS) Photography dating from 1850-1980 will be used alongside contemporary examples of shoreline photography.
David Bate (University of Westminster)
Writerly Images and Photographic Data
This talk explores the dynamic relations between image and text, drawing on the experience of ‘archive fever’. Analogue photographs often combine image and text elements together, as recto and verso of prints, just as metatag data does in digital processes. However, given the contemporary importance of photographic images as archival data, of whatever material form they may be constituted, it is important to note that they require a ‘writerly’ agency to construct meanings about their discourse. In this dynamic, the ‘anonymous’ image and written texts interact in curious ways, in the production of practical knowledge. These features are a crucial aspect of the contemporary ‘art of memory’ and the construction of commonplace meanings.
Anna Dannemann (The Photographers’ Gallery, London)
Rendering thought: Curatorial practice today
Photography exhibitions are part of most annual programmes in art museums and galleries focused on contemporary art. In the past ten years there have been several major photography shows in London that challenge the role of specialist institutions solely dedicated to photography. Photographic displays are varied as they expose the mediums complex nature, and organising photography links questions of academic research, views on technology, modes of presentation and audience engagement.
For my talk I am contrasting the practice of working with artists on solo-exhibitions, realising a specific project and installation, with the process that is required for topical exhibitions presenting research, and the challenges that come with embracing digital installations. Looking at the changing face of the Photography Prize that The Photographers’ Gallery organises since 1996 and the political and historical exhibition of the Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s, I consider questions of common processes for exhibition research and making. What can be found in the physical translation of contents and how have displays changed in recent years? And finally, what is the role of medium-specific institutions going forward?
Sara Davidmann (University of the Arts London. Paper co-written with Val Williams, University of the Arts London)
Curating ‘Ken. To be destroyed’ 2014-2017
In 2013, curator Val Williams read a press story about the archive which artist Sara Davidmann had inherited (with her two siblings) from her mother, Audrey. The archive contained papers, letters and photographs which related to a period of years in the 1950s and 60s, when Audrey’s younger sister Hazel discovered that her husband Ken, was transgender. From this archive Sara had begun to make work and the early makings of the series ‘The Dress’ and ‘For Ken’ had begun to evolve. Sara was also doing very detailed research into the archive itself, transcribing letters, tracing references, attempting to decipher the relationship between family members, from shreds of evidence, mainly letters. The relationship between Val Williams as curator, and Sara Davidmann as artist revolvs around three curatorial outcomes: 1. A small exhibition ‘Ken. To be destroyed’ at the UAL Photography and the Archive Research Centre in 2014, 2. An exhibition at the Schwules Museum in Berlin which was an enlarged version of the 2014 show, with new work by Sara and the latest iteration ‘Ken. To be Destroyed’ in the Upper Gallery at the London College of Communication, staged as the central show of the Moose on the Loose Biennale, 2017. This paper will look at the ways in which three very different outcomes, in different locations and with different audiences in two different countries have come from the ‘Ken’ project and archive resources and the way in which the curatorial/artist collaboration has worked over the three projects. Particular research questions of interest could be:
10.00-10:30 Registration & Refreshments
10:30-10:45 Welcome & Introductory Remarks (Sara Dominici, IMCC/University of Westminster)
10.45-12.30: “Researching Photography” Panel (Chair: Sara Dominici, IMCC/University of Westminster)
- Christopher Morton (Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford): Collecting, Networking, Exchanging: a case study in researching nineteenth-century anthropological photography
- Kelley Wilder (De Montfort University): Catalogue of Absences: researching photography (in) archives
- Benedict Burbridge (University of Sussex): Photography inside the Neoliberal University
12.30-1.30 Lunch
1.30-3.30: “Writing Photography” Panel (Chair: John Beck, IMCC/University of Westminster)
- Karen Shepherdson (Canterbury Christ Church University): Writing Photography at the Edge
- David Bate (University of Westminster): Writerly Images and Photographic Data
3.30-4.00 Coffee
4.00-5.30 “Exhibiting Photography” Panel: (Chair: Peter Ride, IMCC/University of Westminster)
- Anna Dannemann (The Photographers’ Gallery, London): Rendering thought: Curatorial practice today
- Sara Davidmann (University of the Arts London. Paper co-written with Val Williams, University of the Arts London): Curating ‘Ken. To be destroyed’ 2014-2017
5.30-6.30 Drinks Reception
ABSTRACTS
Christopher Morton (Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford)
Collecting, Networking, Exchanging: a case study in researching nineteenth-century anthropological photography
This presentation is a case study in researching the sources of nineteenth-century ethnographic photography that was disseminated throughout European academic networks from the 1860s onwards. The story centres on the mysterious figure of Julius Ferdinand Berini, a Swiss or German immigrant to Australia in the early 1860s, and whose significance has been completely overlooked in histories of early photography collecting in Australia. As this presentation will make clear, Berini was the major source for Australian Aboriginal portraits published in the most significant European publication of anthropological photographs in the nineteenth century, C.W. and F. Dammann’s Anthropologisch-ethnologisches Album, published as folios in Hamburg in the mid 1870s. On the one hand Berini was, it appears, a medical charlatan and serial liar about his travel exploits. Yet on the other he was also seemingly an enthusiastic natural and cultural historian who frequently contributed his thoughts and collections to society meetings within the German speaking educated elite. In 1872 he returned to Europe and lectured to credulous gatherings in London and Berlin, and it is likely that his photograph collection was at this point copied and published by the Dammanns under the auspices of the anthropology society in Berlin. The excavation of Berini’s role is an important case study towards a fuller understanding of the collection, networking, exchange, and dissemination of ethnographic imagery in nineteenth-century Europe.
Kelley Wilder (De Montfort University)
Catalogue of Absences: researching photography (in) archives
If photographs are everywhere, why is it so hard to find them? This talk addresses the kinds of questions we ask of archives, and of catalogues, to find what we want. Photographs are supposedly everywhere, which makes them frustratingly difficult to research. A lack of photographic knowledge, inconsistent or missing metadata, and invisibility are problems put forward to explain difficult research experiences, but this talk addresses as well the kinds of questions we ask about photographs and how questioning our questions might elicit completely different results in researching photographs.
Benedict Burbridge (University of Sussex)
Photography inside the Neoliberal University
My current research develops a politico-economic analysis of contemporary photographic culture. Rather than address the depiction of political subject matter within photographs, I examine the political economies of photography: focusing on the production, distribution and consumption of diverse imagery in terms of labour, profit and power. Such a framework, I suggest, opens interesting possibilities for the study of contemporary art: highlighting an emerging area of interest for artists while also pointing to the significant blind-spots those projects sometimes contain. While a number of artists have turned their critical sights towards relationships between diverse photographic cultures and neoliberalism, only rarely do those projects explore their own immediate relationship to the political and economic system they critique and oppose. In this paper I explore the implications of the situation for my own research, suggesting that an expanded definition of photography’s political and economic contexts necessarily encompasses an academic environment increasingly shaped by free-market ideology.
Karen Shepherdson (Canterbury Christ Church University)
Writing Photography at the Edge
This visual presentation considers how written and presented text can re-shape and re-member the photograph. Re-membering is a slightly ironic concept that attempts to encapsulate the processes of production, curation and writing, synthesising often disparate parts into a (new) meaningful whole. I will consider what is for me, the binding relationship between practice, curation and the writing of photography and by drawing upon examples made at the seaside – right at UK’s edge - reflect upon this potentially dynamic interchange*. In doing this I shall examine how commercial shoreline imagery comes steeped in convention and expectation of what such photography should present and as a consequence can readily perpetuate mythologisations of coastal lives. Such edited pasts are ones where it is all too easy to deny a broader contextualisation of chronic underfunding, limited opportunities, particularly for the working class, with elitism and class boundaries firmly fixed. Thus, this presentation considers how through contemporary practice/curation/writing we can begin to re-member and reshape ‘sunny seaside snaps’, resisting the seduction of nostalgia whilst still fully acknowledging the visual and textual richness such collections provide.
*Examples taken from the South East Archive of Seaside (SEAS) Photography dating from 1850-1980 will be used alongside contemporary examples of shoreline photography.
David Bate (University of Westminster)
Writerly Images and Photographic Data
This talk explores the dynamic relations between image and text, drawing on the experience of ‘archive fever’. Analogue photographs often combine image and text elements together, as recto and verso of prints, just as metatag data does in digital processes. However, given the contemporary importance of photographic images as archival data, of whatever material form they may be constituted, it is important to note that they require a ‘writerly’ agency to construct meanings about their discourse. In this dynamic, the ‘anonymous’ image and written texts interact in curious ways, in the production of practical knowledge. These features are a crucial aspect of the contemporary ‘art of memory’ and the construction of commonplace meanings.
Anna Dannemann (The Photographers’ Gallery, London)
Rendering thought: Curatorial practice today
Photography exhibitions are part of most annual programmes in art museums and galleries focused on contemporary art. In the past ten years there have been several major photography shows in London that challenge the role of specialist institutions solely dedicated to photography. Photographic displays are varied as they expose the mediums complex nature, and organising photography links questions of academic research, views on technology, modes of presentation and audience engagement.
For my talk I am contrasting the practice of working with artists on solo-exhibitions, realising a specific project and installation, with the process that is required for topical exhibitions presenting research, and the challenges that come with embracing digital installations. Looking at the changing face of the Photography Prize that The Photographers’ Gallery organises since 1996 and the political and historical exhibition of the Feminist Avant-Garde of the 1970s, I consider questions of common processes for exhibition research and making. What can be found in the physical translation of contents and how have displays changed in recent years? And finally, what is the role of medium-specific institutions going forward?
Sara Davidmann (University of the Arts London. Paper co-written with Val Williams, University of the Arts London)
Curating ‘Ken. To be destroyed’ 2014-2017
In 2013, curator Val Williams read a press story about the archive which artist Sara Davidmann had inherited (with her two siblings) from her mother, Audrey. The archive contained papers, letters and photographs which related to a period of years in the 1950s and 60s, when Audrey’s younger sister Hazel discovered that her husband Ken, was transgender. From this archive Sara had begun to make work and the early makings of the series ‘The Dress’ and ‘For Ken’ had begun to evolve. Sara was also doing very detailed research into the archive itself, transcribing letters, tracing references, attempting to decipher the relationship between family members, from shreds of evidence, mainly letters. The relationship between Val Williams as curator, and Sara Davidmann as artist revolvs around three curatorial outcomes: 1. A small exhibition ‘Ken. To be destroyed’ at the UAL Photography and the Archive Research Centre in 2014, 2. An exhibition at the Schwules Museum in Berlin which was an enlarged version of the 2014 show, with new work by Sara and the latest iteration ‘Ken. To be Destroyed’ in the Upper Gallery at the London College of Communication, staged as the central show of the Moose on the Loose Biennale, 2017. This paper will look at the ways in which three very different outcomes, in different locations and with different audiences in two different countries have come from the ‘Ken’ project and archive resources and the way in which the curatorial/artist collaboration has worked over the three projects. Particular research questions of interest could be:
- How does curatorship and collaboration ensure that a project such as ‘Ken. To be destroyed’ will appeal to the broadest possible audience?
- How is the balance between the archive’s narrative and art practice emerging from the archive, created and maintained?
- To what extent does audience matter when making a new exhibition- e.g. Schwules, which has a loyal core audience interested in ‘queer’ issues (as well as a wider public) and LCC where the audience is predominantly students and staff.
- How do the characteristics of exhibition space determine what is produced and selected and how it is shown?