Photography and Ontology: Unsettling Images was awarded Best Anthology in the Association of Australia and NZ AWAPA Awards in December 2020. Congratulations to the editors and contributors.

As judges Dr Sheridan Palmer and A/Prof Anthony White announced, “This fascinating and deeply researched anthology contains significant and original critiques concerning the photographic and filmic medium as evidence of social, cultural, and political states of being. Including essays by an international group of researchers, it brilliantly contributes to knowledge and debates associated with the photographic archive. The basic premise underpinning all the essays is that the meaning and definition of photography is inherently unsettled. Among the many stimulating arguments found in the book are that the medium’s epistemology of ownership – “the photograph is always tethered to a witness” (Katherine Biber) — challenges photography’s relation to the arrested historical moment. Each essay rigorously tests its argument about photography’s inherent value and brings in a range of complex issues such as displacement, democracy, truth, reality, and the imaginary. Its theoretical, philosophical, aesthetic, and ontological premises are riveting. The images reproduced in the book are targeted to each contributor’s ideas in a meaningful rather than spectacular way, and the design quality of the publication is in keeping with Routledge’s scholarly, understated style. The editors Donna West Brett and Natalya Lusty have produced an extremely important book which will have profound repercussions in debates about photography for years to come.”

http://aaanz.info/prizes/2020-prizes-2020-awapas-research-in-focus-research-grants/

Photographic Cultures is pleased to announce the publication of Photography and Ontology: Unsettling Images with the Routledge History of Photography Series, 2019.

This edited collection explores the complex ways in which photography is used and interpreted: as a record of evidence, as a form of communication, as a means of social and political provocation, as a mode of surveillance, as a narrative of the self, and as an art form. What makes photographic images unsettling and how do the re-uses and interpretations of photographic images unsettle the self-evident reality of the visual field? Taking up these themes, this book examines the role of photography as a revelatory medium underscored by its complex association with history, memory, experience and identity.

Contents:

Introduction: Natalya Lusty and Donna West Brett

1. Ontology or Metaphor?, Andrés Mario Zervigón

2. Unsettling the Archive: The Stasi, Photography and Escape from the GDR, Donna West Brett

3. Dark Archive: The Afterlife of Forensic Photographs, Katherine Biber

4. Hard Looks: Faces, Bodies, Lives in Early Sydney Police Portrait Photography, Peter Doyle

5. Anticipatory Photographs: Sarah Pickering and An-My Lê, Shawn Michelle Smith,

6. Eli Lotar’s Para-urban Visions, Natalya Lusty

7. The Presence of Video: Making the Displaced and Disappeared Self Visible, John Di Stefano

8. Contemplating Life: Rinko Kawauchi’s Autobiography of Seeing, Jane Simon

9. Suspending Productive Time: some photographs by Gabriel Orozco and Jacques Rancière’s thinking of modern aesthetics, Toni Ross

10. Photography as Indexical Data: Hans Eijkelboom and Pattern Recognition Algorithms, Daniel Palmer

11. Afterword: Photography Against Ontology, Blake Stimson

Magnesium-Blitz mit Schüttungseinrichtung 1928, glass plate negative, 9 x 12 cm, ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, Bildarchiv / Fotograf: Photographisches Institut der ETH Zürich

Photographic Cultures are pleased to announce that a collection of essays will be published with Routledge early in 2018. Photography and Ontology: Unsettling Images features essays by Andrés Mario Zervigón, Shawn Michelle Smith, Katherine Biber, Natalya Lusty, John Di Stefano, Jane Simon, Toni Ross, Donna West Brett, Damian Sutton and Blake Stimson. Edited by Donna West Brett and Natalya Lusty.

This collection of essays explores the complex ways in which photography is used and interpreted: as a record of evidence, as a form of communication, as a means of social and political provocation, as a mode of surveillance, as a narrative of the self, and as an art form. What makes photographic images unsettling and how do the re-uses and interpretations of photographic images unsettle the self-evident reality of the visual field?

The symposium was held in June 2016. If you missed it you can listen to podcasts as they become available here. SYMPOSIUM PODCASTS.

Thank you to all our wonderful speakers and thoroughly engaged audience for contributing to such a wonderful symposium. Thank you also to our supporters and funding assistance from the University of Sydney.

Registration is now open AND you can download a poster for your department.

Symposium program available now Masterclasses are available for postgraduate students and early career researchers in the field of photography. Contact Giorgia.Alu@Sydney.edu.au for more information.