7th International Conference of Photography and Theory (ICPT2024)

DEATHSCAPES:

HISTORIES OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND

CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHIC PRACTICES

 

7-9 November, 2024

Nicosia, Cyprus 

 

www.photographyandtheory.com

Photography has been associated with death since its inception. The invention of photography influenced dramatically how people remember and mourn the dead. The technological advances of photography have also influenced – and are still influencing – how war, conflict, accidents, and atrocities are being documented, circulated and received. Following the vast amount of images of wounded and dead bodies that are photographically documented and circulated through the media over the past few decades, questions relevant to the construction of landscapes of death emerge with great force and relevance.

The 7th International Conference of Photography and Theory (ICPT2024) wishes to directly engage with what seems to be a contemporary field of crises and conflict that affects us all and brings forward significant questions that not only are historically relevant and longstanding but seem to resurface today demanding further study and debate. The idea of ‘deathscape’ does not necessarily and merely reflect the representation of death in the photograph, nor is it limited to above mentioned landscapes of death. It also, and more importantly, aims to open the discussion to diverse perspectives and across varied disciplines - photography, art history, sociology, geography, anthropology, archaeology, film - to offer insights into varied cultural and social landscapes of mourning, remembrance, memorialization, as well as the shifting symbolic meanings inscribed in rituals, aesthetics, technologies, and places.

More specifically, the conference aims to cut across histories of photography and contemporary photographic practices and engage with:

1. debates about death, politics and aesthetics as well as issues relating to the ethical dilemmas of contemporary artistic practices dealing with photography amidst a landscape of violence, devastation, conflict, and memory/memorialization;
2. the spatio-temporal aspects of death expressed and mapped through the personal, the idiosyncratic and the everyday, or as part of collective and public performances; and
3. representations, circulation and production of death, especially in relation to social media and emerging technologies.

Suggested Themes

Photographic Alternative deathscapes

Forensic images of accidents, crimes, and/or suicides

Environmental trauma and ecological destruction

Aerial photographs of destruction

Informal deathscapes through texts and images

Personal / informal counter archives of grief

Festivals, celebrations, and social gatherings as alternative ways of remembering

Death cafes and the death positivity movement

Photography of absence

Computer vision, AI and necropolitics

 

Material culture and practices of mourning and remembering

Photographic practices and mourning

Contemporary photography and funerals

Postmortem photography

Rituals, spirituality and practices of memorialization

Vernacular mourning and collective embodied practices

Remains and the archaeology of dying

Still life photography / memento mori

Bereavement photography

Digital legacies

 

Mediated deathscapes 

Social media and grief, selfies

Commercialization and mass media circulation of death

Mediated sensations and visibility of death in media

Fake news, fake death, deep fakes

Celebrity deaths, assassinations and suicides

Images of war, resistance and protesting

Blogs, podcast, and contemporary memento mori

 

Memorial Landscapes and Photography

Public parks, gardens, and cemeteries 

Heroes, shrines and monuments

Counter-monuments and identities

Persistence of images in memorial landscapes

Ungrievability and exclusions in formal deathscapes

Participatory memory practices in museums

Funeral parlors and rituals

Absences, silencing, invisible traces

We invite proposals for 20-minute presentations from various disciplines, such as: photography, art history and theory, visual sociology, anthropology, geography, museology, philosophy, ethnography, education, cultural studies, visual and media studies, communications, and fine and graphic arts. 

To propose a paper, please submit a 450-word abstract (including references) through our online

submission system, no later than June 10th 2024.

To access our submission system please follow this link:

https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icpt2024

Submitted proposals will go through a blind peer-reviewing and authors will be notified of the acceptance of their proposals by June 30, 2024. For more information and conference updates, please visit the website of the International Association of Photography and Theory: www.photographyandtheory.com

Questions may be sent to: info@photographyandtheory.com

 

Important Dates:

- Deadline for submission: June 10, 2024

- Notification of authors: June 30, 2024

- Deadline for early registration: August 1, 2024

- Deadline for late registration: October 20, 2024

- Conference: November 7-9, 2024