Conference: The Versatile Image: Photography in the Era of Web 2.0

[Alexandra Moschovi]

Conference    Photography in the Era of Web 2.0     24th - 26th June 2011    University of Sunderland     For information and bookings visit http://www.photography-at-sunderland.co.uk or

for any enquiries -mailto:[e-mail]   Speakers include: Mia Fineman (Metropolitan Museum, New York), Julian Stallabrass (Courtauld Institute of Art, London), Martin Lister (UWE, Bristol), David Bate (University of Westminster, London), Daniel Palmer (Monash University, Australia), Paolo Magagnoli (UCL, UK), Rob Wilkie (University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, USA), Damian Sutton (Middlesex University, UK), Nicholas Muellner (Ithaca College, USA), David Jackson (University of Bedfordshire, UK), Arabella Plouviez and Carol McKay (University of Sunderland, UK), Irwan Ahmett and Tita Salina (Indonesia), Kari Andén-Papadopoulos (Stockholm University, Sweden) and Stuart Allan (Bournemouth University, UK), Yasmin Ibrahim (Queen Mary, UK), Marta Zarzycka (Utrecht University, The Netherlands), Mikko Villi (Aalto University, Finland), Eve Forrest (University of Sunderland, UK) Bronwen Colquhoun and Areti Galani (Newcastle University, UK), Janda Gooding (Australian War Memorial, Australia), and Vikki Hill (UWE, UK).

Programme Friday 24 June 2011 @ Culture Lab Newcastle University  16:30 Registration 17:00 Welcome and Introduction 17:30 Keynote speech Martin Lister, Emeritus Professor of Visual Culture, UWE (UK) “Photography, Technology, Ecology” Photographs now saturate the virtual world in a way that bears comparison with the ubiquity they accrued in the actual world across the 19th and 20th centuries. In this context, especially that of Web. 2.0, photography can be seen as part of an information society and economy. Popular and snapshot photography, in particular, can be understood as a forerunner of one of the Web 2.0’s key characteristics: ‘user generated content’. Photography was also the medium that flooded the world with images on an unprecedented scale and from its inception challenged society’s ability to classify, order, and manage their vast numbers. 18:30 Wine Reception

Saturday 25 June 2011 The David Puttnam Media Centre University of Sunderland  9:30 Registration 10:00 Keynote speech David Bate, Reader in Photography, University of Westminster (UK)  “The Emancipating Machine” Transformations in ‘new technology’ have many potentially significant cultural effects. These include the impact of informational lo-fi popular ‘shoot-and-share’ technologies on the distributive networks of photographic images across global populations, while the ‘hi-fi’ video of DSLR cameras offers a liberation of the photographer from stillness. The question of these emancipations in photography returns as a cultural question about what people do with these digital machine images, and what the capture, distribution and circulation of those images do to “us’’ people in our social spaces and psychical reality. 11:00 Tea Break 11:30 Panels A & B 13:00 Lunch and tea 14:30 Panels C & D 16:00-:16:30 Coffee Break 16:30-17:30 Keynote speech Julian Stallabrass, Professor of Art History, Courtauld Institute of Art (UK)  “The Afterlife of Abu Ghraib” The way in which the Abu Ghraib photographs and story were dealt with by the mainstream media in the UK and the US is familiar, and reflects the failure of the media to adequately interrogate the official stories relayed by government sources throughout the war. ‘Torture’ was swiftly reassigned as ‘abuse’, and a state policy on breaking the Geneva Convention was retold as the case of a few ‘bad apples’. The lecture will contrast the mass media treatment of the Abu Ghraib images with their afterlife on the Web in a wide variety of sites, using them for satire, entertainment, political propaganda, among other purposes. It will ask broader questions about state secrecy and the control of images, the decline of the established press, and the rise of fragmented online political communities. 17:30-18:30 Discussion chaired by David Campbell, photography consultant, writer and multimedia producer,  and member of the Centre for Advanced Photography Studies, Durham University 19:00 Conference Dinner

Sunday 26 June 2011 The David Puttnam Media Centre University of Sunderland  9:30 Registration 10:00 Keynote speech Mia Fineman, Assistant Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (USA) “Phoning It In” This paper will examine the spontaneity, immediacy, and low-res rawness of camera phone photographs as an alternative to the slick hyperrealism of much recent large-scale color photography, and will look at how artists’ camera phone projects relate to broader cultural phenomena like citizen journalism, microblogging and social networking. Also addressed will be the ways artists have adapted (or failed to adapt) to new forms of publishing, display, and distribution. Among the works discussed will be three recent artists’ projects representing different approaches to what has come to be known as iPhoneography: Joel Sternfeld’s series of photographs, iDubai, Rob Pruitt’s book and exhibition iPruitt, and Chase Jarvis’s book, website, and iPhone app, The Best Camera is the One you Have with you. 11:00 Tea Break 11:30 Panels E & F 1.00 Close   Full conference fee: £90    Concessionary conference fee:  £40  Day rate:  £50    Conference dinner: £25