Conference

The Photography Program in the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons The New School for Design, The Aperture Foundation, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and The Shpilman Institute for Photography jointly present The Photographic Universe: A Conference. The two-day symposium brings together a range of leading photographers, scientists, theoreticians, historians, and philosophers from Parsons as well as other institutions, to reflect and discuss photography at a pivotal moment in its history.

Photography is an ever-evolving field. Technologies, theories, and what constitutes a photographer or a photograph are prone to unending developments. In the last decade, this dynamism has accelerated due to pervasive digitization. Quite possibly, photography is now in a similar place to where it was during the first few decades of its invention—a time when its emerging cultural significance was rapidly transformed by technological innovation. In the last two decades, we have seen a similar expansion of photography through the digital revolution, the Internet, and growing interest in new photographic processes and applications.

The Photographic Universe: A Conference reflects on this current moment. What is the importance of photography as a medium and a discipline, seen from the perspective of practitioners, users, pedagogues, technologists, historians, and others? How can we evaluate contemporary culture within the expanding photographic field while speculating on the future of images? Prominent thinkers and practitioners discuss their roles in the expanding photographic field, evaluate its role in an increasingly blurry relationship between art and life, and speculate on how photographic images will continue to change the way we see our world.

March 2
Art and Philosophy
Participants
Charlotte Cotton & David Reinfurt
Andrea Geyer & Susie Linfield
Walter Benn Michaels & James Welling
Anne Collins Goodyear & Penelope Umbrico
Chris Boot & Susan Meiselas

March 3
Science and Technology
Participants
Richard Benson & Frank Cost
Simone Douglas & Michael T. Jones
Anthony Aziz & Douglas Lanman
Wafaa Bilal & Virginia Rutledge
Trevor Paglen & Julia Bryan-Wilson

For more information, visit the Photographic Universe I archive here.