Mar 08)

CALL FOR PAPERS

(Deadline: 31 December 2008)

Time and Photography: Time in Photography, Photography in Time
(Leuven & Louvain-la-Neuve)

Thursday 13th, Friday 14th and Saturday 15th of March 2008
Colloque international / International Conference

Scope and content of the conference
This conference is a key moment in the new international cross
disciplinary interest in photography in its relationships with time.
Until recently, the various approaches of photography and time were
elaborated in relative isolation. Among these approaches were: the
narratological, poetological and art-theoretical approaches, which
study the representation of time in the fixed image and its multiple
decodings by an active reader; the historical approach, which
considers the photograph a form of historical evidence; and the
anthropological approach, which examines the photograph the
transformations of the image as a material object through time. The
members of the organizing committee, the keynote speakers, and the
various contributors, have all published widely not just within one
or more of these perspectives, but have encountered within their own
research the necessity to theorize the interdisciplinary dimensions
of the ongoing work as well as to implement them in new joint
research projects, which will be debated during the conference.
The conference tackles the major challenges that have emerged in
recent theoretical research in the field of time and photography. Its
basic methodological and theoretical framework is interdisciplinary,
with a strong focus on philosophically informed art historical
interpretations and culturally inspired formal analysis of the
photographic image as well as of photography as a social practice.
The conference concentrates on the necessity of recovering the
balance between the spatial and the temporal, the formally
descriptive and the historically interpretive approaches of
photography in photography which is no longer restricted to the mere
field of artistic photography, but includes a.o. the documentary and
the scientific use of the medium. More concretely, the conference
brings together scholars from different fields who will present their
answers to the following questions:

Which are the advantages and flaws of the main theoretical models
that help to examine the shifting notion of the “time” in general and
of the “contemporary” in particular in photography? And what are the
features and dimensions of an overall taxonomic description of time
in photography?

Which are the temporal dimensions of the basic notion of “index”,
which has been interpreted until now in an almost exclusively spatial
meaning?

Which temporal dimensions of the photographic image and the
photographic practices are specific to the area, and how is it
possible to transfer the notion of photographic time to the related
fields of other mechanically produced, reproduced, distributed, and
disseminated images?

Which are the best practices actually available and how can we
increase the interdisciplinary surplus value of these examples?

How can we counter the wide-spread idea of the photographic image
only as a still, often seen in contrast to the fluency of the motion
pictures?

How can we counter the wide-spread idea of the digital as an
environment without memory, and how does the idea of photographic
time help to ask new questions to the notion of archival time?

Which are the consequences of the major emphasis on time for a global
definition of the field of photography studies, i.e. to what extent
can the twofold notion of time in photography and of photography in
time broaden and redefine our global vision of photography?

Keynote speakers:
Victor Burgin (San Francisco)
Louis Kaplan (Toronto)
Graham Smith (St Andrews)
Sally Stein (UCLA)

Proposals should be sent via email to: jan.baetensarts.kuleuven.be
and alex.streitbergeruclouvain.be

Contacts:
Jan BAETENS, KUL/Culturele Studies & Lieven Gevaert Centre
Mail: jan.baetensarts.kuleuven.be
Tel. : 00 32 16 32 48 46
Fax : 00 32 16 32 50 68
Alexander STREITBERGER, UCL
Mail : alex.streitbergeruclouvain.be
Tel. : 00 32 10 47 27 85

Comité scientifique/Scientific committee:
Jan Baetens (KUL)
Hilde Van Gelder (KUL)
Alexander Streitberger (UCL)
Luc Pauwels (UA)
Monica Turci (Univ. Bologna)
Marc Emmanuel Melon (Univ. Liège)
Sémir Badir (chercheur qualifié FNRS, Liège)
David Green (Univ. of Brighton)