Blogs

This hybrid symposium looks at photographic clubs and societies from a global perspective and follows on from a workshop held at Birkbeck in 2023. Assessing amateur photographic communities as a phenomenon is more urgent than ever because many of these minor groups were poorly documented at the time, and the majority of their collections have been broken up, dispersed, or lost. These amateur groups show the unrestricted flow of photographic knowledge, often through exhibition, unimpeded by geography or language, and made possible by the efficacy of print communities. Some amateur societies and clubs were founded for specific specialisms, concerns, and aesthetic preferences in a variety of locations, while others evolved from learned societies and earlier forms of education.

The earlier trend of forming clubs and societies for scientific and associational activity reflected broader developments in national and global trade economies. The variety of local photographic clubs and societies, as well as the benefits they provided, served as a vector for new ideas, new values, and new kinds of social alignment, as part of a larger surge in new forms of national, regional, and local identity inspired variously by, for instance, learned societies, Victorian arts and crafts organisations, or medieval guild influences.

The keynote speaker is Professor Emerita Elizabeth Edwards who will talk about Photographic Sociability and the Dynamics of Association. The programme is below or can be downloaded here with speaker abstracts and biographies here.

THURSDAY 26 November 2026
9.00–9.30 Registration and coffee
9.30–9.40 Welcome: Jason Bate, Birkbeck
9.40–10.10 Keynote Lecture (Chair: Jason Bate) Elizabeth Edwards – Photographic Sociability and the Dynamics of Association
10.10–10.25 Discussion
10.25–10.35 Comfort Break

PANEL 1. CONSTITUTING AMATEUR COMMUNITIES
10.35–10.45 Carolyn Bloore – The ‘Calotype Club’
10.45–10.55 Sandrine Chene – ‘When found, make a note of’. Photographic Forums in the Royal Photographic Society Journal
10.55–11.10 Peter Buse – The Liverpool Photographic Society and its Journal
11.10–11.25 Rose Teanby – ‘Ladies shall be eligible’: How the Photographic Society of London Helped to Promote Equality for Women
11.25–11.45 Discussion

PANEL 2. STABLISING AND TRANSFORMING COMMUNITIES
11.45–12.00 Alice Duncan – Framing Country: Amateur Photographic Clubs, the Australasian Photo-Review, and Settler-Colonial Ways of Seeing
12.00–12.10 Maria Manuela Gomes Gonçalves – From the Factory to the World: The Photography Section of the CUF Sports Group and Transnational Networks of Amateur Photography Under the Estado Novo
12.10–12.25 Jürg Schneider and Paul Weinberg – Was Afrapix (Also) An Amateur Photographic Club?
12.25–12.40 Discussion
12.40-13.40 Lunch (for speakers and chairs only)

PANEL 3. INDIVIDUAL-COLLECTIVE RELATIONS
13.40–13.55 Sara Dominici – Developing the Self: Amateur Photography Between Home and Club Darkrooms, 1880s-1900s
13.55–14.10 Carolin Görgen – Archiving Sociability: The Los Angeles Camera Club Archives as Ecosystems of Collective Photography
14.10–14.25 Discussion

PANEL 4. CONTAINMENT VERSUS REGIONALITY
14.25–14.40 Feargal Fitzpatrick – The Dublin Photographic Society: Tremors in the British Colonial Landscape
14.40–14.55 Ilya Leonov – Imperial Networking: Amateur Photography Clubs in Austria-Hungary, 1860s-1900s
14.55–15.10 Michael Pritchard – ‘no longer an appendage of the RPS’: The Postwar Decline of the Royal Photographic Society’s Affiliation Scheme for Overseas Societies
15.10–15.25 Discussion
15.25–15.40 Coffee Break

PANEL 5. THE GLOBAL ECONOMY OF PHOTOGRAPHY 
15.40–15.50 Julieta Pestarino – From Society to Photoclubs: Amateur Photographic Institutions in Argentina
15.50–16.05 Alise Tifentale – One Photographer, One Year, a Hundred Exhibitions: The Statistics of Ambition in Cold War Photo Clubs
16.05–16.20 Samuel Salgado Tello – Mapping an Invisible Tradition: An Ongoing Research Project on Latin American Amateur Clubs and the 1973 First Latin American Photography Meeting
16.20–17.00 Discussion
17.00 CLOSE

The event is supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art. 

Globe-spanning Networks: Mapping Photographic Clubs and Societies in Local, National, and Transnational Contexts 
Thursday, 26 November 2026, in person and online
Free 
Keynes Library, 43 Gordon Square, WC1H 0PD
Full details and registration by 24 November: https://www.bbk.ac.uk/events/event/65332/ 

UPDATED 3 October 2026 with new venue noted above. 

Since photography's invention in 1839, people have tried to photograph what cannot be seen: ghosts, dreams, prayers, sickness, sin, psychic forces—even the human soul. The images they produced are beautiful, unsettling, and often absurd. The experiments behind them are stranger still. Leading scientists, artists, physicians, and thinkers took these investigations seriously. Yet today this remarkable visual record has been dismissed as a curiosity and largely written out of photography's official history.

What if the strangest photographs ever made are also among the most important?

Camera Miracula: An Uncomfortable History argues that attempts to photograph the invisible reveal something fundamental about photography itself. Photography has never simply recorded reality. It has also functioned as a ritual technology for giving visible form to invisible realities. In this day-long symposium, Emily Hauver, Mark Pilkington, Annebella Pollen, Beth Saunders, and Shannon Taggart return to photography's neglected archive. Through surprising case studies spanning art, science, religion, and the paranormal, they reveal how photography has long imagined, negotiated, and transformed what people and cultures understand to be real. At a moment when AI is reshaping our understanding of photographic truth, the medium's forgotten past may offer insight into its future.

Camera Miracula: An Uncomfortable History.
University of Brighton
Sallis Benney Theatre, Brighton, BN2 0JY
Free to register
Thursday, 3 September 2026, 10:30AM - 6:00PM
Programme and booking https://www.ticketsource.com/centre-for-design-history-university-of-brighton/camera-miracula-an-uncomfortable-history/e-ljdmxz

What does the photographic image share with synthetic dyes, fertilizer, and pharmaceuticals? Inspired by the city of Basel’s position as a global center of the chemical industry, this symposium investigates photography's chemical relations, tracing the networks shaped by material resources, industrial infrastructure, and scientific expertise, as well as the ecological legacies of photographic production. The symposium will conclude with an artist talk and workshop led by photographer and researcher Alice Cazenave (Goldsmiths, University of London), an advisor to the UK-based collective Sustainable Darkroom and current Ansel Adams Fellow at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona.

Chemical Histories of Photography
Symposium organized by NOMIS Fellow Katerina Korola
23-25 October 2025
Basel, University of Basel
Details: https://eikones.philhist.unibas.ch/en/news/events/event-details/chemical-histories-of-photography/

The National Portrait Gallery is holding a symposium around its current Irving Penn Portraits exhibition. Join leading photographers and art historians discussing themes and ideas around the exhibition. Speakers include photographers Paolo Roversi and Bettina Von Zwehl, exhibition curator Magdalene Keaney, Edward Barber, Director of Fashion Photography London, College of Fashion, Virginia Heckert, curator of Irving Penn: Small Trades at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Philippe Garner, International Head of Photography, Christie's and Dr David Anfam, Art historian, critic and curator.

Friday 12 March, 10.30-17.00
Ondaatje Wing Theatre

Organised in partnership with London College of Fashion
Tickets: £25/£20 concessions and Gallery Supporters

More details: http://www.npg.org.uk:8080/irvingpenn/events.htm