Capturing the instant
Photography and information: from the Grand Tour to the Big Data
November 3rd-4th, 2017

Porto, Portugal, Faculty of Arts, University of Porto

Since the announcement of the invention of Photography did its enthusiasts consider, as one of their main purposes, to register the movement that was therein flourishing among the wealthier classes: the Grand Tour. Nevertheless, and even before this flux of travellers that was expanding to the speed of the Industrial Revolution, already the individual aimed to gather proofs of its peregrinations, as if relics of saints or artefacts made from exotic materials. In the 19th century, Photography replaced, to a certain extent, the relics and the desire for artistic and archaeological objects that were at times obtained illicitly. It also replaced, in part, the journals and all sort of graphic diaries. The desire for the object became the desire for the image.

When, in 1913, the Portuguese modernist writer Mário de Sá Carneiro referred to the «keeper of instants», he was alluding to the artist and his ability to capture the moment of the desire. Impossible not to compare such designation to that of the photographer: after all, aren’t photographs images of desire and desire-images? More than any other, the traveller seeks through the camera to freeze the time that inevitably flows, in order to keep to himself the places where he has been in a certain instant of his flâneur. Today Photography, in a broad sense, plays an increasing and vital role to the definition of the idea of consumption. The digital opens the possibility to grasp the world through a click, in a process of unstoppable accumulation of data or information. Bearing this in mind, and considering as our motto the attribution given by the United Nations to the year 2017, as The International Year of the Sustainable Tourism for Development, we suggest a reflection on the themes related to the production of photographic image and tourism, as well as to the global production of information connected to the widest diversity of human activities.
Subthemes

- Photography, information and knowledge;
- Photojournalism;
- Public/Private spheres: Photography and social networks;
- Photography and its filters: neopictorialism, stereotypes and other;
- The code of Photography: cultural expressions of/within the image;
- Other proposals may be submitted as long as justified with the presence of 3 or more researchers with papers on the same problematics.

More information: https://encontrosdefotografia.wordpress.com/