CALL FOR PAPERS
Photographic Proofs
Yale University, New Haven, CT
Friday-Saturday, April 4-5, 2008
www.photographicproofs.com

“A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing
happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that
something exists, or did exist, which is like what's in the picture.” â€"
Susan Sontag

“But the proof of the pictures was in the reading. The photographs had to
have their status as truth produced and institutionally sanctioned.” â€"
John Tagg

The Yale University Photographic Memory Workshop, in conjunction with the
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale, invites submissions for
a graduate student conference entitled “Photographic Proofs.” The theme
of this conference should be interpreted broadly. Papers could be
theoretical, historical, or critical explorations based on one photograph
or a collection of photographs. They might interrogate the theme of
photographic proofs from one of many different angles, including
documentary, artistic, commercial, and vernacular photography. Selected
sets of photographs may relate to war, science, medicine, race, class,
law, business, reform, the natural and built environment, frontiers,
performance, gender, sexuality, or family, among other subjects.

In order to engender an inter-disciplinary community and to further
challenge and develop the vocabulary that surrounds photographic
criticism, we encourage submissions from graduate students at all stages
of their studies, working in any discipline. The Beinecke Library will add
to this discussion by hosting a workshop for conference participants
highlighting the library’s extensive photographic holdings.

We are pleased to announce that John Tagg and Marion Belanger will
respectively deliver the opening and closing keynote addresses. John Tagg
is Professor of Art History and Comparative Literature at Binghamton
University. His books, which often focus on the relationship between
photography and power, include The Burden of Representation: Essays on
Photographies and Histories, Grounds of Dispute: Art History, Cultural
Politics and the Discursive Field, and the forthcoming The Disciplinary
Frame: Photographic Regimens and the Capture of Meaning. Marion Belanger
is a professional photographer and a graduate of the Yale School of Art.
Her work has focused on concepts of persistence and change and the way
that boundaries demarcate difference, particularly in regards to the
land. She is currently photographing the shifting edges of the North
Atlantic Continental Plate and, as the Photographer Laureate of Tampa,
Florida, the real estate transformations within that city.

In an effort to foster a geographically diverse community of presenters,
we are pleased to be able to cover travel and accommodation expenses for
graduate students whose papers are selected.
 
Email CVs and abstracts to photographic.proofs_at_yale.edu by Monday, October
15. Abstracts should be under 300 words. Final papers should not exceed
20 minutes in length. We will notify selected speakers by December 15.

The conference co-organizers are Alice Moore and Francesca Ammon, graduate
students in American Studies, Yale University. Please address any
questions to photographic.proofs_at_yale.edu.

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Received on Mon Oct 01 2007 - 14:27:25 EDT