Faculty of Philosophy, National Research University Higher School of Economics
Multimedia Art Museum Moscow / Museum 'Moscow House of Photography'
Institute for History and Archives, Russian State University for the Humanities
with support of the government of Moscow

Call for papers
International Conference
What do we talk about when we talk photography?
November 28-30, 2014

Today photography is losing its former borders on the one hand, as it is dissolved in contemporary art but on the other hand, a photographic image, being a part of everyday communication in social networks, acquires a new grammar. At the same time a vast number of photographs which refer us to the past is becoming today accessible to everyone thanks to digital technologies, whereas the scale and the speed of spreading the images raise complicated tasks for the researcher. All the former and contemporary contexts urge us to assess the photographic medium over and over again theoretically, and to adopt this understanding of photography while working in museums, galleries and archives.
Aesthetic, philosophical, culture-historical discourses on photography are different but they have common features. In contemporary approaches to the research in photography the stress is shifted from the image itself to the problems of cultural vision: the context of the surroundings, the cultural norms and the social practices which determine the meaning of the photographs.
The Conference “What do we talk about when we talk photography?” is timed to the first Exhibition of Stereo Photographs from the archive of Sergei Chelnokov (1869-1924) who was an amateur photographer. He took pictures at the turn of the century both of the everyday life of his family and of the historical events (from the Russian-Japanese War up to the Paris Exhibition of 1900).
This Exhibition which fosters understanding of the photography of the time “after” (after the history, after the photograph) permits in the first place to discuss various themes for constructing history (both history on large scale and history of everyday life), as well as themes of the specific status of the archive and of the erased borders between genres. This Exhibition is called upon to promote studying unknown collections and to study the specifics of the stereoscopic photographs referring to the issues of “new materiality” of photography. It also makes us take a diverse view of the photographs depending on the situation in which they are presented.
The aim of the Conference is to engage specialists working in different fields of research: philosophers, specialists in cultural studies, historians, anthropologists, sociologists as well as those who are involved in practical research: museum workers, curators, collectors, artists, photographers to the discussion of the current problems of photography.

Submitted proposals for presentation should address the following themes (but there is no limit to the list of the themes).

Theory of Photography
Photography and photographic: change of discourse in photography
Image and borders of representation
Photography as a document, as an artifact, as art: new meanings
“Staged” and “Documentary” in Photography

Photography and History
Creating of “Big history” and ”History of Everyday Life”
Fragmentary character of the photograph and the construction of the narrative
Image and photography as instruments of historical vision
Work of a historian: time and memory in the photographic document
Power of image and image of power: politics and propaganda

Photography and Archives
Status and logic of the (photo) archive
Trauma and memory: the forgotten and the subdued
Unknown collections: photography “ad marginem”
Vernacular photography in museums and in private collections
Travel Photography: from ethnographic collections to online-albums

Photography and Disaster
Chronicles and reporting: genre of presenting the disaster
War photography
Esthetics of violence and death in photography
Details of horror: photographic ‘reality “and “realism”
Traumatic experience – photography as evidence and as therapy

Photography and New Materiality
Photography as (physical) object
(Non)materiality of image
“Amateur” photography in “high art”
Stereo photography: technical parameters and effects of image

Important dates:
Deadline for submission: August 1, 2014
Notification of authors: August 20, 2014
The deadline for the publication of the material: October1, 2014 (about 20,000 printed signs)
The time of the Conference: November 28-30, 2014

To propose a paper please send a 1000-word (maximum) thesis no later than August 1, 2014 to photoconf2014gmail.com. Please indicate full name of each author with current affiliation and full contact details. A short biographical note (200-world) could be supplied on a separate document. Documents could be in Russian or English.

There are limited funds to partially cover the travel and accommodations costs. Participants will be notified of the financial support by August 20, 2014.

The Organizing Committee:
Olga Annanurova, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow/Museum “The Moscow House of Photography”
Ilya Inishev, Higher School of Economics
Dmirii Novikov, Higher School of Economics
Anna Petrova, Moscow Museum of Architecture
Nina Sosna, Higher School of Economics