You are invited to participate in the Dialogue The Image in Conflict

The Image in Conflict includes the participation of three internationally renowned theorists, Pepe Baeza, Clemente Bernad and Ignacio Ramonet. The experience, knowledge and different viewpoints of these three experts (author, editor and analyst), guarantee that this virtual session will become a platform for reflection and enriching debate in the arena of photographic theory. Through debate, the Dialogue will allow us to update theories about the ways in which photography fulfills its documentary function, its limits and possibilities.

As Pepe Baeza says, The Image in Conflict  is a title which allows us to revise the very nature of the photographic image and its norms and communicative contexts, and, at the same time, consider its utility and possibilities. The objective of this Dialogue is the analysis of the context in which photography can and must  comply with one of it most important objectives: that of  providing  a visual testimony of social, political and economic reality, bearing witness, therefore, to the material and symbolic conditions generated by those structures  and events which make up our sense of history. As this objective develops within a certain set of contexts, we need to also analyse the forces and interests at work behind any documentary project: from the global culture which produces it, to its mediatization by those who transmit its contents.

This analysis of how photography enters the realm of political, sociological and economic debate, is  Pepe Baeza's first starting point. What are the limits (and also the possibilities) of these photographic practices, with their focus on knowledge and transformation of the world? In which way and in which format can these practices be channelled, via traditional or new means? Which other channels  can we  adopt so that the documentary use of photography acts as a collective form of knowledge, a public service? These are the issues to be raised, and to which you can contribute at http://enconflicte.dialegskrtu.cat.

From the perspective of the worsening economic crisis and its impact in the visual and informative arena, the potential emergence of new regional powers  which generate new visual contents, the alternatives to the established channels of distribution, the commentary of specific cases which exemplify the best examples of contemporary documentary making... These are just some of the issues that this edition of SCAN 09 will attempt to address.

Dialogue The Image in Conflict
Pepe Baeza, Clemente Bernad and Ignacio Ramonet
Editor: Joana Hurtado.
Organised by: KRTU of the Department of Culture and Communication of the Government of Catalonia, in collaboration with SCAN, Vilaweb and Tarragona City Council.

http://enconflicte.dialegskrtu.cat from 20 March

Metropol Theatre, 13 May, 19.30 h
Rambla Nova, 46
43004 Tarragona