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We call for papers that explore new ways to study magazines and magazine photography as practiced in the United States, 1930-1970. We invite participation from all scholars, writers, curators, archivists, librarians, artists, and independent researchers who use illustrated print culture in the study of American social history.

We seek to loosen categories such as “photojournalism,” “art photography,” “documentary,” “illustration,” or “snapshot,” in favor of broader consideration about the multiple ways photographs function. We are interested in all forms of photography destined for the printed page: editorial, advertising, illustration, educational, scientific, political, and more. We invite consideration of all kinds of magazines, including general interest and fashion as well as science, medicine, shelter, design, travel, house organs for corporate clients (such as The Lamp/Standard Oil of New Jersey), industry publications and propaganda (Amerika, published by USIA).

We invite proposals (from any discipline) for 20-minute talks about US magazine history, 1930 to 1970. We hope to reconsider the historiography of magazine photographers, editors, and designers, to highlight the collaborative nature of magazine production, explore technological considerations, and reveal behind-scenes decision making. How did the public’s interest in photography influence the growing marketplace?

We are inspired by exhibitions such as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, (re)Framing Conversations: Photographs by Richard Avedon, 1946-1965, Princeton and MFA Boston’s, Life Magazine and the Power of Photography (2022), The Jewish Museum’s Modern Look: Photography and the American Magazine (2021), and Art Gallery of Ontarios’ Building Icons: Arnold Newman’s Magazine World, 1938-2000 (2023), and by scholarship such as Nadya Bair’s The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market (2020), Thierry Gervais, The ‘Public' Life of Photographs (2016), and Vanessa Schwartz and Jason Hill, Getting the Picture: The Visual Culture of the News (2015), and the National Museum of African American History’s co-stewardship, with J. Paul Getty Trust, of the Johnson Publishing Company Archives.

This day-long set of presentations and discussion will be held at the National Museum of American History. Speakers will receive an honorarium. The goal of the conversation is to expand histories, explore new methodologies, identify repositories, and build scholarly community.

Please send a 300-word proposal, and short bio to: photographyandmagazines@gmail.com by July 1, 2024.