Melissa McCarthy ’s work considers photography as something that spreads: through time, over borders, beyond established categories. It leaks and expands, diffuses and clots. In her 2023 book Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro, she traces a route from Agamemnon at Troy, via the memory book and the botanical archive, detouring past excavations at Ur up to shark biology in Jaws and repetition in Twin Peaks. There is photographic practice and thinking in all of these artworks and texts, if we’re willing to tilt the page, consider the surface a little differently.
Melissa will read from her book and talk, and then Michelle will respond with thoughts relating to her own upcoming book A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog and Empire. The discussion will be opened up to the audience will include how we think of photography, and how photography might extend beyond the bounds of particular techniques and equipment, or even light sensitivity.
Melissa McCarthy is a writer based in Edinburgh. Her books include Photo, Phyto, Proto, Nitro (2023) and Sharks, Death, Surfers: An Illustrated Companion (2019). She has worked as a film curator and arts journalist in London and Durban, South Africa. For more details see: https://sharksillustrated.org/ and on Instagram @mccarthysharks
Michelle Henning is Professor in Photography and Media at the University of Literature. Her books include Photography: The Unfettered Image (2018) and A Dirty History of Photography: Chemistry, Fog and Empire (2025- forthcoming).
Absolutely Nebulous: Fog, Fuzzy Edges and Vagueness in Photographic Fields
Melissa McCarthy, with Michelle Henning
Wednesday, 30 April 2025, 1500-1700
University of Liverpool, School of the Arts Library, 19-23 Abercromby Square, Liverpool and online
Register here
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