Blogging Images: Photojournalism and Public Commentary

Northwestern University, Saturday, April 30

Because photojournalism is a public art, it exists in part to provoke and inform public discussion.  Likewise, good public discussion includes talking about images as a way of thinking about public affairs and other things held in common.  Although photojournalism has been accompanied by commentary from its inception, digital technologies have provided both new media for image circulation and new venues for critical commentary and audience interaction.  These changes provide an opportunity for scholars in the humanities to become more directly engaged with public audiences, but effective engagement is likely to require different skills and perhaps different attitudes than those that characterize academic discourse.

The conference and workshop on Blogging Images focuses on analyzing and writing about images for a public audience.   The morning sessions will feature presentations by photographer Brian Ulrich and bloggers Jim Johnson and Michael Shaw.  These sessions will focus on the transformation of the visual environment as it has altered photograph documentation, the use of photography in the definition and redefinition of public spaces, and the rhetorical constraints and strategic decisions involved in developing blogs devoted to critical discourse about visual culture.

The afternoon sessions will be devoted to critical discussion of draft blog posts presented by student participants.  Each post will be presented to a small group of other writers, who will help each other improve their interpretive and presentational skills.  The presenters from the morning session and other faculty will be involved as well.  Students who wish to have their work reviewed in the workshop should notify Jesse Baldwin-Philippi at j.baldwin.philippi@u.northwestern.edu by April 22.

Schedule:

Annie May Swift Hall: Helmerich Auditorium

8:30 Continental Breakfast

9:00 Brian Ulrich, Document to Propaganda: The New Face of Photographic Truth

10:00 Jim Johnson, The Uses of Photography: Thinking About Public Space

11:00 Coffee break

11:15 Michael Shaw, BagNews and the Role and Process of Analyzing News Images

12:15 Break

2:00-4:00 Workshops: AMS Hall, rooms 109, 110, 219 (specific rooms will be assigned to workshop participants at a later date)

4:00 Closing Remarks (AMS Helmerich Auditorium)

The workshop is sponsored by the Center for Global Culture and Communication and the Department of Communication Studies/Program in Rhetoric and Public Culture.

Photograph taken in Bloomington, Minnesota by Brian Ulrich.