African Photography: The Ethics of Looking and Collecting in the Age of Restitution.

Since the 1990s, exhibitions of African photographers such as Seydou Keïta have raised questions about the relationship of ownership to authorship, visibility to privacy. Concerns about the ethics of looking and collecting have grown more urgent with recent debates about the restitution of African cultural heritage.

This online symposium draws together scholars, artists, and curators who explore the ethics of working with photographs and methods to decolonize the medium, and its histories.

What rights do photographers have? In today's age of hypervisibility, can sitters claim their "right to opacity," to use Édouard Glissant's term? What is the future of collecting and curating photographs that originate in family and colonial archives on the continent? Can viewers embody “the active struggle of looking with,” in Tina Campt’s words—rather than observe passively—and can this engender new ways of seeing?

For registration and more information: art.as.virginia.edu/african-photography-conference

Program
9:00-9:30 Welcoming Remarks by David Freedberg and Douglas Fordham; Introductory Remarks by Z.S. Strother

9:30-10:30 Conversation with an Artist: Lebohang Kganye in conversation with Steven Nelson
10:15-10:30 Q&A

10:30-12:00 Roundtable: Ethics of Collecting and Curating
With Patricia Hayes (moderator), Osaisonor Godfrey Ekhator-Obogie, Candace Keller, and Ingrid Masondo
11:45-12:00 Q&A

12-1pm Lunch Break

1:00-2:30 Ethics of Looking
Presentations by John Peffer (“Copyright, Privacy Rights, Human Rights and African Photography's Distributed Personae”), Sandrine Colard, and Giulia Paoletti (“On Naming and Looking, Together”)
2:10-2:30 Q&A

2:30-3:00 Coffee Break

3:00-3:50 Keynote Lecture by Temi Odumosu
3:35-3:50 Q&A

3:50-4:00 Concluding Remarks by Steven Nelson

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Organized by
Z.S. Strother (Columbia University) and Giulia Paoletti (University of Virginia)

Presented by
The Italian Academy for Advanced Studies, Columbia University
Department of Art History and Archaeology, Columbia University
Department of Art, University of Virginia

With the generous support of
Buckner W. Clay Endowment for the Humanities, University of Virginia
Institute of the Humanities and Global Cultures, University of Virginia
UVA Arts & the Office of the Provost & the Vice Provost for the Arts
The Carter G. Woodson Institute, University of Virginia
The Institute of African Studies, Columbia University
The Department of African American & African Diaspora Studies, Columbia University
Photography Network

And with a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation