The programme and registration for this student-led conference is now open. Photographs are mobile and malleable. They travel between people and places, change appearance and form, and traverse through different settings and environments. In image-led societies, photographs are often disrupted or removed from their original contexts to be repurposed by governments, institutions and researchers, as well as by artists, communities, campaigners, and many others. How, and to what ends, are these photographs being repurposed, and by whom? How does repurposing photographic materials impact social, cultural, and political phenomena? This conference aims to facilitate discussions on the reuse, recirculation, and transformation of photographs, and explore the ways in which they have been re-employed in both the contemporary and historical contexts.
‘Repurposing Photographic Materials’ is a student-led hybrid conference on photography and visual culture, funded by Midlands4Cities through the Arts and Humanities Research Council. It provides a platform for speakers and audience members to share their ideas, receive constructive feedback, and establish valuable networks. The event is open to anyone interested in the conference’s research topics, including students, academics, artists, and practitioners. Updates will be posted to the website and to the social media pages.
The programme:
Day 1: Monday 7th July 2025
Panel 1: Repurposing Historical Photographic Practices and Processes (Chair: Jo Gane)
09:30 - 09:35 Panel 1 Opening (Jo Gane)
09:35 - 09:50 Jo Gane (Birmingham City University) Repurposing historical photographic processes: Re-creation
09:50 - 10:05 Martin Jürgens (De Montfort University) Repurposing in the 1840s? The case of multiplying the unique daguerreotype
10:05 - 10:20 Aindreas Scholz (Technical University Dublin) Reactivating Cyanotype: Repurposing 19th-Century Photographic Practices for Ecological Resistance
10:20 - 10:50 Panel 1 Q&A
10:50 - 11:05 Break
Panel 2: Photographic Interventions in Political Struggles and Transformations (Chair: Javed Sultan)
11:05 - 11:10 Panel 2 Opening (Javed Sultan)
11:10 - 11:25 V. Emmanuel Leon Bobadilla (University of Oxford) The affordances of photographic annotations: thinking through 'The Class' by Marcelo Brodsky
11:25 - 11:40 Emma Colombi (University for Foreigners of Perugia) Recovering the Past. The Contemporary Reuse and Re-signification of Italy’s 1968–1977 Protest Photography
11:40 - 11:55 Vincent Hasselbach (University College London) আওয়াজ উডা – কথা ক/ awaaz utha – kotha ko: potential histories and anticipated futures in the visual and material cultures of the 2024 monsoon revolution
11:55 - 12:10 Kateryna Volochniuk (University of St Andrews) Operational Images and Industrial Discipline: The Case of Soviet Photo-Accusations
12:10 - 12:40 Panel 2 Q&A
Panel 3: Reimagining Archival Photography in Contemporary Practice (Chair: Emma Hyde)
13:40 - 13:45 Panel 3 Opening (Emma Hyde)
13:45 - 14:00 Kamal Badhey (University of Brighton) Building Regional and Transnational Contexts with the Family Albums of the Apna Heritage Archive
14:00 - 14:15 Emma Hyde (De Montfort University) Digitisation as Repurposing: Photographs in the Age of a “Digital Revolution”
14:15 - 14:30 Daniel Rathbone (University of Warwick) Remembering Places: The People’s Parks Archive Project and Photographic Histories in South Africa
14:30 - 15:00 Panel 3 Q&A
Day 2: Tuesday 8th July 2025
Panel 4: Participatory Photography and Constructing Identity (Chair: Victoria Shaw)
09:30 - 09:35 Panel 4 Opening (Victoria Shaw)
09:35 - 09:50 Huw Alden Davies (University of West England Bristol) Collective Identity Through Community Portraiture
09:50 - 10:05 Molly Caenwyn Warren (University of Westminster) Repurposing the (Queer) Home in the (Home) Darkroom
10:05 - 10:20 Philip Waterworth (Sheffield Hallam University) The disabled flaneur: Using a method of collage to map and negotiate disability and assemble memories of place
10:20 - 10:50 Panel 4 Q&A
10:50 - 11:05 Break
Panel 5: Photographic Transformations in Social and Cultural Heritage (Chair: Daniel Rathbone)
11:05 - 11:10 Panel 5 Opening (Daniel Rathbone)
11:10 - 11:25 Madeleine Bonham Jones (Birkbeck, University of London) The Golden Age of the Ocean Liner: Postcards of RMS Aquitania and the Corporate Image
11:25 - 11:40 Devon McCulloch (University of Brighton) Alien Registration: The Passport Photo, Bureaucratic Procedures Past and Present
11:40 - 11:55 Alfisha Sabri (University of Warwick) Framing Imperial Fantasies: A Historical Study of Mussoorie’s Photographs and their Nostalgic Present
11:55 - 12:10 So Yin Tam (University of Oxford) Co-authorship in Focus: Contractual Metafiction in Conceptual Photography, 1970s–1980s
12:10 - 12:40 Panel 5 Q&A
12:40 - 13:40 Lunch
Panel 6: Photographic Representations and Re-presentations of Community Memories (Chair: Caroline Fucci)
13:40 - 13:45 Panel 6 Opening (Caroline Fucci)
13:45 - 14:00 Caroline Fucci (University of Leicester) Looking at the Big Picture: Archive, Narrative, and History in Biennial Exhibitions
14:00 - 14:15 Isabel Collazos Gottret (University of Leicester) Repurposing from within, weaving logic and purpose into the Artecampo Museum Archive
14:15 - 14:30 Emily Patten (University for the Creative Arts) A Lesbian Narrative: The Impact of Dissemination Methods on Tessa Boffin’s Photographic Tableau, The Knight’s Move (1990)
14:30 - 15:00 Panel 6 Q&A
Closing
15:00 - 15:05 Closing talk (Javed Sultan)
Repurposing Photographic Materials
Hybrid, 7-8 July 2025
Regisration is free
Leicester, De Montfort University
Full programme and abstracts here: https://studentphotocon2025.wordpress.com/
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