For more information, contact Melanie Phillipe. For a daily schudule of events, click here.
Documenting the Disaster
History may be a slaughter pen, but we didn’t always get to watch. Now we do, up to a point, and some social commentators are sure to become censorious. It is customary to fault photography for turning disaster into a spectacle, but the critique is mistaken in many ways beyond simply blaming the messenger. Sure, you can gawk if you like, but there is so much more going on–in the photograph and in the complex dynamics of public response. More to the point, the photographs of the unfolding catastrophe in Japan provide a remarkable opportunity to think about where modern societies are and where they are going. We’ve listed below some of the slide shows (as of today) that offer particularly rich archives.
The Boston Globe’s Big Picture provides extensive coverage here, here, here, here, here. here, and here.
The New York Times has arranged before and after photos taken by satellite. The Times primary collection of over 100 photographs of the disaster is here. They also have some readers’ photos.
ABC News has joined before and after photos in a smart format that allows you to scroll back and forth from past to present.
American Modern at the Chicago Art Institute
American Modern
An Exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago
A special exhibition that explores the evolution of documentary images through the work of three of the foremost photographers of the 20th century will be on view at the Art Institute of Chicago from February 5 through May 15, 2011. American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White presents more than 140 iconic images by Berenice Abbott (1898-1991), Walker Evans (1903-1975), and Margaret Bourke-White (1906-1971)–all taken between the years of 1929, when the stock market crashed, and 1941, when Pearl Harbor was bombed. This exhibition not only shows, for the first time, the photographs of Abbott, Evans, and Bourke-White in relation to one another, but it also chronicles how documentary photography had a hand in transforming modern art in America.
A scholarly catalogue, published by the University of California Press, accompanies the exhibition. The 213-page American Modern includes spectacular images by Berenice Abbott, Walker Evans, and Margaret Bourke-White, and features essays by co-curators Jessica May, Sharon Corwin, and Terri Weissman. It can be purchased in hardcover in the Museum Shop or online.
Additional information is here.
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Announcement: Seminar on Visual Rhetoric and Public Culture
VISUAL RHETORIC AND PUBLIC CULTURE
June 12-15, 2011/Wayne State University
with Professor John Louis Lucaites
Studies in visual rhetoric have rapidly expanded into a significant portion of rhetorical, critical, and cultural studies. The critique of visual texts – films, photographs, tattoos, bodies – has become a new focus for rhetorical analysis. This seminar will examine various forms and theories of visual rhetoric in the context of public culture, ideology, and civic participation. How does “seeing” reflect and promote rhetorical practice and systems? How do images and iconic photographs teach ways to “see” and “be seen” as citizens in our liberal-democratic public culture? How do we negotiate power through performance of display, observation, and vision?
Application Deadline is March 15, 2011
All PhD students interested in being exposed to leading communication research and theory are encouraged to apply. Most expenses for accepted candidates will be paid by the Department of Communication at Wayne State University. Covered expenses include airfare, lodging & meals, and course materials. A welcoming reception and social events will give participants time to get to know each other and to discuss and exchange ideas. A small group of doctoral students from throughout the nation will be selected to join this unique program. Download the application form at www.comm.wayne.edu/summerseminar.php.
Summer Seminar on Picturing Reform
Picturing Reform:
How Images Transformed America, 1830-1880
June 19-24, 2011
Worcester, Massachusetts
The Center for Historic American Visual Culture is sponsoring a Summer Seminar that will will focus on the history of print production in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; interpreting portrait paintings, prints, and photographs; “reading” illustrations in popular journals; and related topics. Participants will also have access to the varied collections of visual materials of the American Antiquarian Society to pursue their own interests.
The seminar will be led by Louis P. Masur, the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American Institutions and Values at Trinity College, along with other faculty. The cost of the seminar will be $750 with some financial aid available for graduate students. Housing will be at a hotel within walking distance; the room rate is about $100 per night plus taxes. Participants can share rooms at a considerable savings.
The deadline for applications to the seminar is March 18, 2011.
Additional information is here.
Detail from Currier & Ives’ The Republican Party Going to the Right House (1860).
Paper Call: IMAGE=GESTURE
IMAGE=GESTURE
Nomadikon, the Bergen Center of Visual Culture, has extended the paper call for its conference, Image=Gesture, to be held in Bergen, Norway, November 9-12, 2011.
As a critical and heuristic trope, the gestural galvanizes many of the most pertinent areas of inquiry in contemporary debates and scholarship in visual culture and related disciplines:
a) Ethics: Images and their values and affects.
b) Ecology: Iconoclastic gestures and spaces of conflict.
c) Experience: The human as acts of mediation/product of the gaze.
d) Epistemology: Archive, document, memory.
e) Esthetics: From visual essentialism to transesthetics and synesthesia.
Abstracts should not exceed 400 words. Please include a short bio. Deadline for submitting abstracts: March 1, 2011.
A more extensive description of the conference and submission guidelines is here.
Photograph by Ruth Frenson/New York Times. Because Nomadikon has not offered an image for the conference, we thought we’d supply one–as a gesture, you might say.
Grant Opportunities: Shpilman Institute for Photography
The Shpilman Institute for Photography (The SIP) has announced two calls for papers for its 2011 Grants Program. The first is devoted specifically to research in philosophy and photography; the second is a general call for research in the field of photography. The SIP invites scholars and independent researchers from all over the world to submit their applications through its website, where guidelines, themes, the application process, and submissions can be found. Grants for individuals and group research will range from US $5,000 up to $15,000. The deadline is March 1, 2011.
Academic faculty at accredited institutions of higher education, currently enrolled Ph.D. candidates, previously published independent scholars, photographic practitioners, and research-oriented curators are invited to apply. Grants are based on proposals for research leading to the completion within the grant period of a written document, whether an essay or extended research paper, showing deep consideration and thorough, original research on the selected topic.
The SIP, founded by Shalom Shpilman in 2010, is a research institute whose mission is to initiate and support innovative scholarly work that will advance the understanding of the varied meanings, functions, and significance of photography and related media. Through its grant programs,The SIP commissions and sponsors individual and group research projects, with an emphasis on philosophical concerns, including scholarly papers and publications in print and online, conferences, symposia, and other events.
Conference Paper Call: Making Sense of Visual Culture
Making Sense of Visual Culture
University of Rochester
April 1st-3rd, 2011, Rochester, New York
The Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester invites scholars from across disciplines to discuss the evolving institutional and methodological contours of our field. From April 1st-3rd, 2011, “Making Sense of Visual Culture” will address large-scale disciplinary questions as well the development of new approaches to an expanded range of sensory objects, phenomena, and practices.
We invite innovative work by graduate students and non-tenured faculty for a series of round-tables, workshops, and panels that will address the two major, interlinked concerns of the conference: sensory experience and the future of the field.
There are many ways to participate in this discussion, even if you cannot join us in April.
1. We are circulating a questionnaire. All responses will be posted to an open access website to create a broad dialogue. (Instructions for accessing the questionnaire are here.)
2. We solicit 300-word abstracts for 20-minute paper presentations on work that exemplifies, challenges and expands the field of visual studies. Possible topics include, but are not limited, to: multi-sensory approaches to material culture and memory – the “hegemony of the visual” – the practice of visual culture as method, discipline or sensibility – visualizing sensory experience – cultural difference and the senses – epistemology of the senses – histories of perception – lending form to affect – synesthetia – the interface of vision and touch – changing practices of visualizing information – the present and future of medium specificity (in both artistic and scholarly practices) – the role of technologies in sensory perception.
Please include a brief CV with your submissions. Deadline: January 15, 2011. Please email these documents to submissions@makingsenseconference.com
World Photography Festival
The first World Photography Organization festival to be held in the US will be in San Francisco, November 18-21 at Left Space Studios, 2055 Bryant Street. The event will include four days of workshops, talks, live photo-shoots, portfolio reviews, and portfolio workshops lead by industry leaders.
Conference Paper Call: The Image
December 2-3, 2010
University of California, Los Angeles
The conference is a cross-disciplinary forum bringing together researchers, teachers and practitioners from areas of interest including: architecture, art, cognitive science, communications, computer science, cultural studies, design, education, film studies, history, linguistics, management, marketing, media studies, museum studies, philosophy, photography, psychology, religious studies, semiotics, and more.
You may submit a proposal to the Conference Review Committee for an In-Person Presentation, or a Virtual paper at the Image Conference. If your conference proposal is accepted you may submit a written paper to The International Journal of the Image. All proposals, presentations and papers must be in English.
The deadline for the current round in the call for papers is August 5, 2010. Additional information is here.