Snapshots of photographic theory

Although today it may seem that photography is extensive, living as we are in an age in which we are bombarded with images, we probably are still far from knowing what photography really is. The difficulty in defining photography, and in constituting its theory, stems from its flexibility, its instability, its permeability and its very defencelessness. It is hybrid in nature and in a constant state of motion.

It is for this reason, perhaps, that to define photography we need to go further than photography itself, and even the entire photographic media, and analyse the whole set of elements which shape and model it.

We don't only need to look at it from inside, as we have traditionally done, but also externally through new lenses and filters to renew our observation, which is perhaps already obsolete. We also need to remove ourselves from the photograph itself, in order to observe it in different conditions, positions and areas of study. In this way we can complement the traditional ontological study with another, more multidisciplinary and heterogeneous one. In this sense, photography, not having an institutionally fixed, stable home, is like a container, open to everything that we can learn about its changing exterior, and also, inevitably, its elastic content.

The SCAN Symposium, Snapshots of Photographic Theory, aims to become a framework for debate to explore the state, function, uses, consumption and future of photography and its theory, and at the same time explore contemporary thinking, needing as we do to investigate new formulas to understand it and its relation with the world, and by the same token, our own relationship with it.

Pedro Vicente
Director