Philosophy of Photography 16.2 - The problems and possibilities of a photographic education today.
(Open submission issue with a special section on photography and education today).

Philosophy of Photography is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to the understanding of photography, published twice yearly since 2010. In the last three years Philosophy of Photography has published a series of extensive special issues that have explored modes of cameraless photography (POP 13.2), violence and its relation to the contemporary image (POP 13.2 & 14.1), glitch aesthetics (POP 14.2), and the expanded visualities arising from new modes of machine learning and widely accessible AI (POP 15.1-2). POP 16.1 is an open submission issue that will appear in the late autumn of 2024. The subsequent instalment of the journal (POP 16.2, Spring 2025) will be an open issue featuring a special section on the topic of education as it relates to contemporary photography, new media technologies and their critical and theoretical discourses.

Call for contributions: The problems and possibilities of a photographic education today

Since the early 2000s, significant waves of technological innovation – from increasingly networked camera phones to new uses of computational techniques and digital methods in the humanities and art history – have radically impacted the practice, theory and teaching of photography. More recently, a new wave of generative Artificial Intelligence – which includes both image generation software like Dall-E and Large Language Models such as ChatGPT – has generated a series of moral panics across higher education, specifically around issues of academic integrity, plagiarism and originality. When it touches on photography in this context, journalistic and managerial discourse has tended to focus on a range of perceived threats affecting the evaluation of artistic production and the truth claims of the critical and theoretical discourses surrounding it. As the guest editors of our recent special issue on photography and emerging technologies remarked: “regulators are trying desperately to catch up with the ethical and sociopolitical implications of new technologies and impose regulations and checks. Their efforts are, as yet, slower and less critically acute than many artistic and activist interventions.” Anecdotally, there seem to be many pedagogical practices around the globe whose critical engagement with these issues are exemplary and could usefully inform governing bodies grappling with the implications of this fast changing technological and cultural context. But a regressive atmosphere colours governmental, managerial and much journalistic commentary on the topic. In response, we want to ask how the creative possibilities and critical potentials this situation harbours might help avoid the danger of uncritically embracing such technologies. For instance, from the point of view of subaltern subject positions and marginalised identities these technological upheavals might promise critical purchase on a world whose existing technologies of truth construction and knowledge production are exclusive and riven with inequalities.

This call invites contributors to explore the question of what it means to teach and to learn photography in today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape. In particular, we ask what are the substantive problems facing critical teaching practices in this context? What novel possibilities are presented for the development of radical pedagogies and what forms of critical leverage might these find in a conflicted world?

We are particularly interested in contributions that address the following questions and topics. But the list is not exhaustive and we welcome explorations of other issues arising from the central theme.

● What is the current state of teaching and learning with/against generative AI? Should we worry, for instance, if it means the twin shibboleths of originality and artistic genius are consigned to history? From a pedagogic point of view, in what ways does the current turn towards AI urge us to rethink conventional approaches to media literacy and artistic creativity?
● How might the fate of photography help one reimagine what an institution of learning could be today?
● What broader lessons can we learn from case studies focusing on new computational methods, pattern recognition technologies and new modes of imaging in photography education?
● What do today’s students of photography (artists, photographers, engineers and designers but also editors, archivists, historians and theorists) need to learn in order to survive, if not to prosper, in a tumultuous world reshaped by the deepening of automation and technological control, riven by political upheaval and overshadowed by impending climate disaster?
● What are the implications of AI and machine learning for teaching on and learning about what Susan Sontag once referred to as “photography’s widening, ever incomplete history”? How might these implications reshape the History of Photography?
● Does the widespread rush to monopolise on these new technologies commercially while attempting to restrict their impact on education serve only to cement existing political and economic norms? What alternative approaches might serve as, for instance, convincing vehicles for pedagogies of decolonisation?
● What resources does the history of radical photography education offer today’s students and educators? How might prior forms of critical photographic pedagogy, such as those associated with earlier moments of feminism, community organising and developing photographic literacy, be rethought under contemporary conditions?

Contributions to this special section can approach the questions raised critically, theoretically and/or in the form of case studies. They can take the form of photoworks, short discursive articles or full scale research papers. Please make sure to use the journal’s style guide in preparing your contribution and feel free to contact the editors if you have further questions.

The deadline for submissions for POP 16.2 is 15 January 2024.

Submissions should be made via our website:
https://www.intellectbooks.com/philosophy-of-photography

Please mark your submission to this call clearly as follows: The possibilities of a photographic education today

Potential contributors with articles, artworks and commentaries on other topics are still welcome to submit their work for inclusion in this issue. The editors warmly invite submissions exploring any aspect of photography, related modes of imaging and visual or digital culture from a critical and theoretical standpoint. The journal publishes articles, interviews, critical commentaries, print symposia on key topics, book reviews, conference reports and analyses of specific technical developments. The editors are happy to consider proposals in the form of photographic / artistic works. Prospective book, exhibition and conference reviewers should contact the editors by email.

Philosophy of Photography is published by Intellect Books and indexed with the Web of Science’s Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI).

Editors

Andrew Fisher, 
FAMU, Prague, Czechia: 
andrewthomas.fisherfamu.cz
Bernd Behr, Camberwell College of Arts, London:
 b.behrcamberwell.arts.ac.uk
Alex Fletcher, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London:
 a.c.fletchercsm.arts.ac.uk

Noa Levin, Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland: 
noa.levinusi.ch
Simon Constantine, University of Nottingham: simon.constantinenottingham.ac.uk