Call for Papers | Summer Symposium 2019 | Photography and Printed Matter
SUMMER SYMPOSIUM 2019 | Photography and Printed Matter
20th Anniversary
University of St Andrews
3 – 4 June 2019
Keynote Speakers:
Dr Patrizia di Bello, Senior Lecturer, History and Theory of Photography | Co-Director, History and Theory of Photography Research Centre, Birkbeck, University of London| Editor-in-Chief, History of Photography
Dr Dana MacFarlane, Honorary Fellow, School of Art History, Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh
ABOUT
The Association for Art History’s Summer Symposium is a two-day annual conference that highlights current doctoral and early career research. This year the Summer Symposium celebrates its twentieth anniversary. The 2019 event will focus on research on photography and other forms of printed matter.
Held at the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews, the conference aims to explore the links between process and product, as well as drawing attention to the variety of different practices and techniques often categorised under the rubric of ‘prints’.
The place of photography at St Andrews is well established. Early practitioners of the medium such as John and Robert Adamson made this small Scottish seaside town the subject of their first experimentations, and the legacy of their work continues to inspire those living and working in St Andrews today. Every year the St Andrews Photography Festival attracts a wide range of contemporary photographers and visitors, while the School of Art History offers a unique MLitt in the History of Photography that focuses specifically on the evolution of the medium, highlighting the University’s extensive collections.
Inspired by these institutional connections, the Summer Symposium asks instead how the influence of photography and print making technologies may connect the local, the national and the international, as well as the historical and the contemporary. For instance, writing on cameraless photography, Jonathan Griffin states that ‘photograms have more in common with print-making, or even with the world’s oldest known paintings: outlines of hands silhouetted by pigment blown on to cave walls in Indonesia and northern Spain, dating from around 40,000 BCE’. Acknowledging this extended genealogy allows us to re-assess the dominant role that prints and photographic images have played across the arts.
Since the invention of the printing press, the potential for the widespread circulation of words and images has increased exponentially. The second main theme of this conference, then, invites reflection on the way we mediate, contextualise and interpret images through printed matter. From captions to contextualisations, illuminated manuscripts to light-sensitive papers, printed matter encompasses a variety of different artefacts including artist’s books, illustrations, engravings, and even art historical texts themselves. Indeed, the photographing or engraving of artworks has enjoyed a crucial role in the reception and the pedagogy of art history regardless of the time period or the geographical location under study.
Considering these strong links between prints and practice, how might the development of new technologies help us think differently about past practices and mechanisms? How might the pervasiveness of photographs and prints, and their potential for replication, lead us to ignore their effects and sociological impact? What, for example, might we learn from the way these technologies are used to create norms or influence how we interpret artworks? Alternatively, to what extent might photography still be considered as ‘other’ in relation to the fine arts, or be involved in processes of ‘othering’ itself? This conference aims to prompt discussion regarding the transhistorical and transnational use of photographs and prints in art history, and the various purposes, projects and contexts in which they are deployed.
As this is the 20th year of the Summer Symposium, there will be a special opportunity to visit the University of St Andrews Photographic Collections.
PROGRAMME & TICKETS
We were delighted to receive more paper proposals than anticipated and are currently in the process of finalising the selection of papers. The 2019 Summer Symposium programme, including speakers and papers, will be online very soon and tickets will be available from May.
The 2-day programme will be made available online in due course. Papers will take place over two days and the programme will include tours and visits, as well as a conference dinner and receptions. Accommodation will be available, but one-day only tickets will also be available this year.
Tickets will be a similar price to last year and will take into account the cost of getting to and staying in St Andrews. Tickets will range from £15 – £40. Tickets includes keynotes, receptions, lunch and refreshments, but excludes accommodation.
The Summer Symposium is organised by the Association for Art History’s Doctoral and Early Career Research (DECR) committee. The 2019 organisers are Clare Fisher (St Andrews University) and Clare Nadal (University of Huddersfield/ The Hepworth Wakefield).
Please note that this event will be photographed for use by the Association for Art History. If you have dietary requirements please make them known.
Image credit: Eadweard Muybridge Plate 620 ‘Canter: saddle: thoroughbred bay mare’ from Animal locomotion: an electro-photographic investigation of consecutive phases of animal movements 1872-1885, photogravure, Special Collections, University of St Andrews Library ID: EJM-AL-47.