The PHRC conference 2024 is now open for registration. There have always been unacknowledged or under-acknowledged forces that operate around photography. Some of them are human, like family members, camera assistants, darkroom personnel, curators, editors and the like. Others are non-human, like algorithms, chemicals, equipment of various sorts and transportation. The explosion of AI has pushed the field of photography studies to once again consider the practices surrounding photographs, but has at the same time neglected existing assistants like the skills force, the editors, image technicians, programmers, curators, and historians that enable and narrate photographic making. In the face of so many assistants, the primacy of the photographer as a central person through whom we understand photography recedes.
In this PHRC 2024 conference, speakers will consider the role and agency of human and non-human assistants in the making, collecting and dissemination of photographs. The papers to be delivered will employ diverse methodological perspectives that not only enlarge the notion of the photographic assistant, but also consider the role of those assistants (or that assistance) in the formation of photographic practices, images, archives and histories.
The Photographer's Assistant
Photographic History Research Centre
17-18 June 2024
Hybrid event, Online and at De Montfort University, Leicester.
Open for registration and programme here: https://photographichistory.wordpress.com/annual-conference-2024/
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