Décloisonner l’image locale. Pour une histoire matérielle et culturelle de la photographie dans le canton de Fribourg / Decompartmentalizing the local image. For a material and cultural history of photography in the canton of Fribourg.

In collaboration with the University of Fribourg and the Cantonal and University Library of Fribourg, Photo-Fribourg is launching a call for papers from researchers in the humanities and social sciences on the theme of Décloisonner l’image locale. Pour une histoire matérielle et culturelle de la photographie dans le canton de Fribourg/Decompartmentalizing the local image. For a material and cultural history of photography in the canton of Fribourg. Its objective is to publish a reference work on the history of photography in the canton of Fribourg, to be published in 2026. The selected researchers will also be invited to present their work at a study day at the University of Fribourg in the spring of 2024, probably in May. This initiative is part of Photo-Fribourg, an ambitious project which aims to highlight the history of photography in the canton of Fribourg. During the summer of 2026, Photo-Fribourg will take the form of a photography festival in about ten cultural and heritage institutions.

Context:
"The time has come to explore other photographic regions", such is the observation made recently by specialists in the history of photography in the face of the rise, over the last two decades, of spatialized histories of photography on a local or regional scale: the cantons of Neuchâtel, Lucerne, Jura and Uri for Switzerland, the department of Isère or the region of Alsace for France. These studies often follow in the wake of national histories, which they claim to want to complement. In the case of Switzerland, the regions covered by these works are precisely those which feel that they have been 'marginalised' by these same national histories, whose attention has been essentially limited to the study of the main urban centres. Thus, the change of scale, from national to regional, from synthesis to case study, would have made it possible to 'uncover' new pages of history, or even to 'reveal curiosities'.

The case of Fribourg, which is the subject of this call for papers, is no exception. Relatively unknown on a national scale, and even less so on a global scale, photography in the canton of Fribourg has been the subject of a shared interest between the main institutions working to safeguard the canton's cultural heritage. These institutions have made it possible to gather a corpus of archives that is as important as it is heterogeneous, and which contains, by a cumulative effect, the numerous traces of the various practices that have invested photography in the canton over the past two centuries. In order to consider the impact of photography on the local scale of the canton of Fribourg, this call for papers proposes to broaden and decompartmentalize the study of these archives beyond the history of artistic representations and forms in order to explore the social, technical and economic components that have marked the visual culture of the canton.

The ambition of this call for contributions is twofold. On the one hand, it aims to bring together specialists in the (art) historical and social sciences working on themes related to the world of photography in the canton of Fribourg. On the other hand, it wishes to propose the study of these same themes in a transregional perspective of crossed, comparative or connected histories. In this sense, the call is addressed to a local expert who knows and masters the regional corpus, as well as to an international researcher whose expertise in phenomena of the same kind makes it possible to mobilise this same corpus in terms of connections and circulation, interdependencies between sources and connections between the margins of history.

Objectives:
The objective of this call for papers is to publish a reference work on the cultural, art historical and social history of photography in the canton of Fribourg. The selected researchers will also be invited to present their work during a study day at the University of Fribourg. The process of associating a meeting with the publication of a book requires a pre-established calendar that the authors commit to respect when submitting their proposal.

Articles may concern all disciplines and all theoretical or practical approaches to photography. They can be written in French, German or English. This call is open to all contributors, regardless of their affiliation or professional status. Proposals for articles, which should not exceed 1500 characters and be accompanied by an iconographic file (6-8 images with complete captions) and a short biographical note, should be sent to to infophoto-fribourg.ch before June 1st, 2023.

Without restricting ourselves to these examples, we invite contributions in the humanities and social sciences that relate to one or more of the topics identified so far by the editorial board:
https://photo-fribourg.ch/sujets.

Please send the application to:
infophoto-fribourg.ch

Website:
www.photo-fribourg.ch