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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