Conference: Here and There: Reflections on Place-Based Photography.

All photography takes place somewhere, but only some photography makes that place the focal point. From its conception, photographers have used the medium to document places, ranging from specific sites to regional and national landscapes, with the aim to educate, archive, preserve, and critique. Photographs of home and the local allow for reflections on belonging, community, and personal identity, whereas images taken elsewhere, perhaps in foreign lands, suggest an anthropological drive to capture (the essence of) the unfamiliar.

Whilst historically the camera has largely been considered as an indexical tool, striving for objective documentation of the landscape, more recent photography and photographic theory acknowledges that both perceptions and representations of place are malleable. As it captures pre-existing locations, photography can simultaneously create subjective, mythological, and fictional versions of the place in question. Additionally, cinema, TV and video games produce ‘photography’ of entirely fictional places. The development of photo editing technologies and artificial intelligence have further brought the reliability and purpose of place-based photography into question.

The conference calls for scholarship that interrogates photography as a practice that sustains, creates, transforms, and expands places. By investigating photography’s relation to place, both historically and today, we are interested in exploring photography as a medium and tool for placemaking that both imagines new worlds and shapes our understanding of the physical, social and cultural landscapes of the places we inhabit.

The conference will take place in person at the University of Warwick, United Kingdom, on Saturday 13th September 2025. We welcome proposals from all disciplines for academic papers and responses that engage with, but are not limited to, the following themes:

- Historical representations of place
- Photographic imaginaries of place
- Indexicality in place-based photography
- Time and temporality in place-based photography
- Negotiations of myth, fiction and reality in place-based photography
- Tensions between site-specific, regional, national and global representations of place
- Photographic responses and remediations of places from other media, including film, literature, and video games
- Interdisciplinary practices and theories in the study of place-based photography
- Applications of photo editing and artificial intelligence in place-based photography
- Ethical considerations and responsibilities of photographing place

Each participant will have 20 minutes to present their paper, followed by a 30-minute Q&A for each panel.

To apply, please submit a 200-word abstract, along with a brief biography, to Jarkko Tanninen (jarkko.tanninen@nottingham.ac.uk) by 5PM (GMT) on Wednesday 30th April 2025.

Speakers will be able to apply for a limited number of travel and accommodation bursaries to help with the costs of attending the conference.