Call for papers: Towards a social and cultural history of photographic image producers / deadline 30 April 2021

[Michael Pritchard]

To what extent does the meaning of a photograph depend on social experience, industrial contingencies, the professional environment or the culture of its producers? This special issue of Photographica - from the Société française de photographie - aims to explore this question and thus extend the discussions initiated during a seminar at the EHESS in 2018–2020.

The issue attempts to contribute to the growing number of studies into the professions or companies related to photography (previously unknown or underestimated by historiography), as well as recent research on the influence of cooperation networks on the “‘public’ life of photographs”. Its purpose is to bring together texts devoted to trajectories and collaborations of the multiple players who participate in the production of photographs and, at the same time, contribute to shape their modalities of existence in social space. Instead of questioning the photographer’s gaze, the meaning or the intrinsic power of his or her images, the question will be to examine skills, trades or professions involved in the conception, the financing and/or making of photographic images intended for distribution in multiple copies to a wide audience. How, by whom, and according to which cultural, social, and economic models, has the expertise of these producers been structured and, possibly, hierarchized within a field whose contours remain to be questioned over the course of the history of photography? At the same time, what were the repercussions of the interactions between these producers both on their operating models and on their photographs?

The full call is in the PDF here:  Photographica_4_call_EN-FR.pdf.