Other Photographs
Photography has become a media so slippery and nomadic that we find it difficult to define. It would be just as difficult to count the different types of “photographs” that exist.
Neither attempt, probably, would make sense. Photography now is not simply an “index” or a “metalanguage of art”, as suggested by Rosalind Krauss, but something much more complex and multifaceted. Have we asked ourselves and are we still asking the wrong questions? Do we need to reinvent the theory of photography so that it doesn´t fall behind in relation to its practice? Or, as W.J. Mitchell has suggested, has the theory of digital photography developed much faster than its practice in recent years?
Perhaps a theory of photography already exists, but, as Victor Burgin says, now the question is: What is photography?
Saturday, 16th of May
10.00 - 10.50 h
Postdigital photography
Jean-François Chevrier.Art historian. Professor of the National High School of Fine Arts, Paris. Independent exhibition commissioner.
Forecasts for photography in the 21st century predict future uses based on current signs. Theory should be based, for a start, on historical knowledge of uses and works. Lying somewhere between fine art and the media and everyday art, this twofold nature has helped photography define modern art. This story is not over yet. A theory based on critical analysis of works and historical situations can offer points of support for artists whose work is impossible to foresee. I shall take as an example the historical situation of the portrait of the United States in the 1960s, when Warhol met Walker Evans.
10.50 - 11.40 h
Foolish fires.
Daniel Canogar. Artist and photographer.
Daniel Canogar will talk about his artistic process working with photography and light.
11.40 - 12.20 h
Break.
12.20 - 13.10 h
Photographicity.
François Soulages. Professor of the University of Paris 8 and the National Institute of Art History, France.
What is the nature of photography? Only the concept of photographicity can help shed some light on the matter. Photographicity is the surprising articulation of irreversibility and endlessness: the irreversible process of obtaining the negative and the endless work of processing it.
This is the basis of not only the singular nature of photography, but also the triple aesthetics of photographicity: irreversibility, unfinishedness and the articulation of both. It is at the heart of the aesthetics of photographicity that we find the sense of the aesthetics of choices, possibilities, the image of images, vicissitudes, combination, endless receptions, etc. Caron’s study of a contact sheet would be an example.
The leading concept here is photographicity: the aesthetics of photographicity have to be put into practice.
13.10 - 14.00 h
(Re)thinking photography.
Sarah Kember. Professor of New Communication Technologies, Goldsmiths College, University of London.
The premise of this paper is that although photography is proliferating and diversifying and has not died the death of the digital that was predicted in the 1990s, we still do not know what it is. In order to find out what it is, we must look at it from outside and inside, and consider both the condition of photography and its ontology. The paper proposes an ontology of photography as process: one that can be understood through the terms of memory and intuition as opposed to the terms of perception and affect.
16.00 - 16.50 h
Good intentions. Uses and dis-uses of photographic theory today.
Jana Leo. Artist and president of the Mosis Foundation –Models and Systems–, Art and City.
Theory has been replaced by intention. It seems that it is enough to have good intentions. Intention is not a method of discovery, but a value system. Theory does not judge; it is a reflection. Intention is good or bad; it is the force of the will in pursuit of a goal; it is there before the action and might have little to do with it… Two people meet but don’t speak the same language. Interpretation has no sense either before or after – it has to be simultaneous. Theory is a form of simultaneous interpretation. Photography is a form of reflection. Theory cannot be something external to photography.
16.50 - 17.40 h
Photography in the technological era: A complex moment.
Martin Lister. Professor of the University of the West of England, Bristol.
Some twenty years after the effective meeting of the camera and the computer we may only now be glimpsing its significance. Broadly conceived, there is now more photography than ever. This ‘more photography’ includes a complex mix of continuity, reinvention, change and transformation. Beyond technological change we are also experiencing a re-evaluation of photography’s traditional characteristics, and the elements of a different history of photography emerge.
17.40 - 18.00 h
Break.
18.00 - 20.00 h
Round table: The theory of photography:
A “transdiscipline” to (re)invent?
Moderator: Jordi Alberich. Professor and student vicedeacon and Audiovisual Communication academic coordinator, Faculty of Communication and Documentation, University of Granada.
Participants: Jana Leo. Artist and president of the Mosis Foundation - Models and Systems -, Art and City. / Daniel Canogar. Artist and photographer. / Guillermo Yáñez Tapia. Director of Investigation, Centre for Visual Studies, Chile. / Susana Blas. Art critic and writer on the TV programme Metrópolis (TVE 2).
20.00 h
Conference close.
Biographies
Jean-François Chevrier
Art Historian. Lecturer at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Independent exhibition curator
Historian and art critic, lecturer in art history and contemporary art at the École Nationale Supérieure de Belles Arts in Paris since 1988, Jean-François Chevrier is the author of several essays on the exchanges between literature and visual arts in the 20thth and 20th centuries) and art after the 1960s. He has also published an essay on art historian Jurgis Baltrusaïtis and has carried out research on architecture and art in urban environments.
His other occupations include: founder and chief editor of the journal Photographies (1982-1985), general director of Documenta X (1997), since 1987 curator of exhibitions (and accompanying books-catalogues), including Une autre objectivité/Another Objectivity (London, Paris, Prato, 1988-1989), Photo-Kunst (Stuttgart, Nantes, 1989-1990), Walker Evans & Dan GrahamDes territoires (Paris, 2001), Öyvind Fahlström (Barcelona, Villeurbanne, 2001-2002), Art i utopia. L'acció restringida/L'action restreinte. L'art moderne selon Mallarmé (Barcelona, Nantes, 2004-2005).
His recent publications include:
-
Paysages territoires. L'Île de France comme métaphore. Marseille, Parenthèses, 2002 (ed.)
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L'Action restreinte. L'art moderne selon Mallarmé. Paris, Hazan, 2005.
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Jeff Wall. Paris, Hazan, 2006.
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La fotografía entre las bellas artes y los medios de comunicación. Barcelona, Editorial Gustavo Gili, 2006.
-
Proust et la photographie, republished (1982) with a previously unpublished letter by Marcel Proust and a series of images of Venice (drawings and daguerreotypes) by John Ruskin. Paris, L'Arachnéen, 2009.
Daniel Canogar
Artist and photographer
He lives and works in Madrid. He studied for a Master's Degree specialising in Photography at New York University and the International Center for Photography in 1990. His publications include Ciutats Efímeres: Exposicions Universals, Espectacle i Tecnologia, Julio Ollero (ed.), Madrid, 1992, and Ingràvids, Fundació Telefònica, Madrid, 2003, as well as a number of essays on the architecture of the image, contemporary photography and new-media art.
He
is currently artistic director of VIDA,
an annual contest run by Fundación Telefónica. As a visual artist
he works with photography, sculpture and installations. His work has
been exhibited at Palacio de Velázquez, Madrid; Galería Max
Estrella, Madrid; Galería Filomena Soares, Lisbon; Galerie Guy
Bärtschi, Geneva; Caprice Horn, Berlin; Mimmo Scognamiglio
Artecontemporanea, Milan; Centre d'Art Santa Mònica, Barcelona;
Museo Alejandro Otero, Caracas; Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio;
Kunstsammlung Nordrhein Westfallen, Dusseldorf, Hamburger Bahnhof,
Berlin and Mattress Factory Museum, Pittsburgh.
François Soulages
Lecturer at Université Paris 8 and the National Art History Institute in France
Lecturer at Université Paris 8 and the National Art History Institute in France, director of the team Arts des Images & Art, director of RETINA-International (aesthetical and theoretical research on new and old images), head of Collège iconique at the National Audiovisual Institute in Paris, director of collections for the publishing house Klincksieck (L'image & les images, Les rencontres de la mep).
His
fields of research encompass the philosophy and aesthetics of the
image (and,
more specifically, photography): art, image, unconsciousness and
politics; art, image, unconsciousness and the body. His philosophical
questioning looks at contemporary theories and philosophies, the
contemporary and aesthetics.
Sarah Kember
Reader in New Technologies of Communication at Goldsmiths, University of London
Sarah
Kember is Reader in New Technologies of Communication at Goldsmiths,
University of London. She read English Language and Literature at
Oxford University, and has an MA and PhD from the University of
Sussex. Her key publications include: Virtual
Anxiety: Photography, New Technologies and Subjectivity
(Manchester University Press, 1998); Cyberfeminism
and Artificial LifeInventive
Life. Approaches to the New Vitalism
(Sage, 2006). She is co-editor of photographies
journal with Martin Lister, Liz Wells and David Bate. Her work is at
the intersection of debates in feminism, photography, new media,
science and technology studies and philosophy. Sarah is increasingly
interested in performative theory or the emergence of new modes of
communication inside and outside of academia. She is currently
working on a novel (The
Optical Effects of Lightning)
that remediates science, fiction and cultural theory, and is planning
a multimedia/liquid book provisionally entitled Media,
Mars and Metamorphosis.
Life
Stories.
Jana Leo
Artist and president of Fundación MOSIS-MOdelos y SIStemas; Arte y Ciudad
Jana Leo is a Doctor in Philosophy and Arts, has a Master's Degree in Art and Aesthetics Theory from the UAM and a Master's Degree in Architecture from the University of Princeton. From 2000 to 2007 she taught projects and advanced concepts in Art and Architecture at Cooper Union University in New York, and from 1996 to 1997 she taught the Master's Degree in Photography at the Department of Fine Art at the UCM.
Her artistic work has been exhibited at museums, galleries and shows, including MNCARS, Galeria Javier López in Madrid, ARC and ICP in New York. Her book Rapi-New York will be published in London in 2009 and El Viaje sin distancia, perversiones del tiempo, el dinero y el espacio en la cultura contemporánea, CENDEAC, was published in Murcia in 2006.
Jana
Leo is the founder and president of Fundación MOSIS-MOdelos y
SIStemas; Arte y Ciudad. Madrid 2008.
Martin Lister
Professor at the University of the West of England, Bristol
Martin
Lister is Professor of Visual Culture at the University of the West
of England. He trained as a painter before studying philosophical
aesthetics and art and cultural theory. During the 1970s and 1980s he
was a pioneer and activist in photographic and media education. He
has subsequently taught and researched in cultural studies and media
history in a number of UK universities. In 1996 he produced the first
CD-ROM
to explore the 'photo-digital' (From
Silver to Silicon: a CD-ROM about photography, technology and
culture,
London. ARTEC) and edited The
Photographic Image in Digital Culture
(Routledge, 1995). He is co-author of New
Media: A Critical Introduction
(Routledge 2002 and 2008), and author of 'Photography in the Age of
Electronic Imaging' in Liz Wells' (ed.) Photography:
A Critical Introduction (Routledge,
2003 and 2007) and 'A Sack in the Sand: Photography and
Information', in Convergence:
The International Journal of Research into New Media
Technologies,
Sage.
Jordi Alberich
Professor at the University of Granada
Doctor in Design in Image (1998) from the University of Barcelona. He is currently a Professor at the University of Granada and Coordinator of Audiovisual Communication Studies and vice-dean of students at the Department of Communication and Documentation.
He is author of, amongst others, the books Grafismo multimedia (Editorial UOC, 2007), Comunicación audiovisual digital. Nuevos medios, nuevos usos, nuevas Formas (co-edited with Antoni Roig, Editorial UOC, 2005), El cant de les sirenes. Ressons postmoderns en la photography contemporània espanyola (Fundació Espais, 2000) and Photography i fi de segle. Art, discurs i photography en el trànsit de la postmodernitat (Ediciones Di7, 1999).
He
is a founding member of the editorial board for the e-Journal
ArtNodes.
Susana Blas
Art critic and editor of the TV programme Metrópolis (TVE 2)
Contemporary art historian, specialising in audiovisual creation. She is editor of the TV programme Metròpolis (TVE 2) on contemporary art.
She writes for several publications on photography, video and electronic arts and has given a large number of workshops and conferences on this subject.
She has designed several circles and exhibitions, including Videos XX (PhotoEspaña, 2002), Adolescentes (Reina Sofía 2003), Vete a tu habitación (La Casa Encendida. Madrid, 2003), EL: ¿nuevos masculinos? (Sala Juan Francés. Zaragoza, 2006), Disparos eléctricos. Vídeo y Feminismo (Centro Cultural Montehermoso. Vitoria, 2007), El viaje dislocado (MARCO. Vigo, 2007), and 8 vídeos para marzo (CAB. Burgos, 2008), amongst others.
Since February 2004 she has curated the regular video art programme La Casa Encendida: Videomix.