Exposures: Photography at the Gate of Phenomenology

An international conference organized by the Department of Philosophy, Tel-Aviv University and the Shpilman Institute for Photography, June 2-4, 2013

The conference aims at creating a dialogue between photography-theory and phenomenology, a dialogue that is crucially missing in contemporary thinking about photography and its layered intersections with basic dimensions of human experience: subjectivity and the intersubjective, affectivity, temporality and embodiment, visuality, virtuality and the invisible.

Up until Barthes's Camera Lucida(1981), the photographic image has remained in the margins of the concerns of phenomenologists including those for whom the question of the image was central (e.g., Sartre, Merleau-Ponty). This has not changed much after Barthes. And, while photography has indeed received some attention by post-phenomenological thinkers (such as Derrida or Nancy), it has never become central to their thought on images, the condition of the visual or the space of meaning. In a corollary manner, phenomenology, in itself, was not recognized by the consistently developing theoretical discourse on photography as a potential source of insight or as
having an appeal in providing methodological tools for understanding the complex relationship between photography and human everydayness. Our aim in the conference is to take the first steps in exploring the possibilities and the limits of phenomenology through its encounter with the multifaceted phenomenon of photography.

How can phenomenology contribute today to the understanding of the place of the photographic in the contemporary life-world? What kind of challenge does photography pose to phenomenology? What is the relevance of Barthes today? What can phenomenology teach us about the ontology of the digital image? What are the modalities of the contemporary photographic gaze and how are they connected the matrix of relations that constitute everyday experience? What are photography's invisibles and how can photography uncover phenomenology's blind spots?

For further inquiries, contact conference organizers:

Hagi Kenaan, Dept. of Philosophy, Tel Aviv University, hagi.kenaangmail.com

Orna Raviv, Dept. of Philosophy, Tel Aviv University, ornarvivzahav.nte.il

Sunday- 2.6.13

15.00-15.30 – Greetings
Eyal Zisser, Dean of Humanities, Tel Aviv University
Shalom Shpilman, Director of Shpilman Institute for Photography
Hagi Kenaan, Department of Philosophy, Tel Aviv University

The Photographic Condition

15.30-16.15
Ed Casey
Taking Photography to the Edge

16.15-16.30
Coffee break

16.30- 17.15
Hagi Kenaan
Photography and its Shadow

17.15-18.00
David Campany
Photographs and Multiplicity

19.00- 20.30
Cocktail at SIP.

Monday- 3.6.13

Photography and the Limits of Phenomenology

9.30-10.15
Emmanuel Alloa
Negative Phenomenology: On Merleau-Ponty’s Oblivion of Photography

10.15-11.00
Aïm Deüelle Lüski
Phenomenology and Horizontal Photography

11.00-11.15
Coffee break

Face, Portrait, Medium

11.15-12.00
Veronique Foti
Photography and the Indeterminacies of Appearing

12.00-12.45
Orna Raviv
Andy Warhol's Screen Tests: The Face between Films and Stillies

12.45-13.30
Cheung Chan-Fai
Self-Portrait Photography

13.30-14.30
Lunch

The Digital Image: Subjectivity and Event

14.30-15.15
Vered Maimon
Precarious Marks: Thomas Ruff’s jpegs

15.15-16.00
Meir Wigoder
Gestured Sight: Cellular Phone Photography and the Notion of the Event

16.00-16.15
Coffee break

16.15-17.15
Round Table

Tuesday- 4.6.13

Photography and Affectivity: After Barthes

9.30-10.15
Ilit Ferber
Sadness: Benjamin and Barthes

10.15-11.00
Michal Ben Naftali
Seen and Unseen: The Primal Scene between Barthes and Derrida

11.00-11.15
Coffee break

11.15- 12.00
Ruth Ronen
Camera Punctura

12.00-12.15
Coffee break

Photography and Temporality

12.15-1300
Mauro Carbone
Falling Man: a Destruction of Destruction Images

13.00-13.45
Eran Dorfman
Photography and the Question of Deferred Retroaction

13.45-15.00
Lunch

Photography and Fantasy

15.00-15.45
Wayne Froman
Phantoms, Revenants, and Doppelgaenger: The Apparitions of Photography

15.45-16.30
Eli Friedlander
Photography and Fantasy after Benjamin

16.30-17.30
Round Table and Closing Remarks