ICPT2024
7th International Conference of Photography & Theory (ICPT2024)
DEATHSCAPES: HISTORIES OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHIC PRACTICES
7-9 November, 2024, Cyprus
Chairs: Elena Stylianou & Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert
Organizer:
International Association of Photography and Theory
Photographs by Constantinos Constantinou
ICPT2024 Theme
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:
a) 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;
b) 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
c) representations, circulation and production of death, especially in relation to social media and emerging technologies.
Keynote Speakers
Yiannis Papadakis
Yiannis Papadakis is Professor of Social Anthropology at the Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cyprus. He is author of Echoes from the Dead Zone: Across the Cyprus Divide (I. B. Tauris, 2005, also translated in Greek and Turkish), co-editor of Divided Cyprus: Modernity, History and an Island in Conflict (Indiana University Press, 2006), editor of a 2006 special issue of Postcolonial Studies and co-editor of Cypriot Cinemas: Memory, Conflict and Identity in the Margins of Europe (Bloomsbury, 2014), among others. His published work has focused on ethnic conflict, borders, nationalism, history education, cinema, post-colonialism, migration and cemeteries. His recent work engages with issues of migration and social democracy in Denmark and the comparative study of cemeteries in Cyprus, Denmark and currently Japan.
Jo Ractliffe
Since the 1980s, Jo Ractliffe’s photographs have reflected her ongoing preoccupation with the South African landscape and the ways in which it figures in the country’s imaginary, particularly the violent legacies of apartheid. In a country with a powerful tradition of social documentary, Ractliffe became known for her distinctive photographic approach in photographing places of violence and conflict, drawing attention to the absent and unseen, traces of meaning beyond the evidentiary. In 2020 Steidl published a monograph on Ractliffe’s work, Photographs: 1980s – Now. Her photo-books include Being There (2022), Signs of Life (2019), Everything is Everything (2017), as well as The Borderlands (2015), As Terras do Fim do Mundo (2010) and Terreno Ocupado (2008), which documented the aftermath of the war in Angola. Ractliffe is represented by Stevenson Gallery: https://www.stevenson.info/artist/jo-ractliffe
Cherine Fahd
Cherine Fahd (b.1974) is a Lebanese-Australian photographer living and working in Sydney. She has devoted over two decades to examining photography as a dynamic social practice. Much of her early works present a surrealist engagement with photography, the boundaries between staged and unstaged photography, and how we perform for the camera. Cherine also writes broadly on photography. Her scholarly work has an enduring focus on everyday familial experiences, which often, to humorous effect, provoke questions about race, cultural difference, death, grief and the role of mourning in the family album. Recent research has examined the destigmatisation of infant loss through post-mortem photographs on social media and the political and ethical issues of making death public. Cherine's creative work has been commissioned by leading Australian cultural institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia and the Sydney Opera House. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally at the Haifa Museum of Art, Benaki Museum Athens, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography. Cherine's scholarly articles are featured in respected journals “Photographies,” "Photography and Culture" and "Philosophy of Photography." She is the author of three photo books, including the award-winning "Apókryphos" (2019), which won the Australia New Zealand Photobook Award. Cherine holds a PhD from Monash University and is an Associate Professor in Visual Communication at the University of Technology Sydney.
ICPT2024 Organising & Scientific Committee
CHAIRS
Elena Stylianou, European University Cyprus / Nicosia Municipal Arts Center, associated: Pierides Foundation, Cyprus, and
Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, Cyprus University of Technology / CYENS Centre of Excellence, Cyprus
MEMBERS of organising committee
Nicolas Lambouris, Frederick University, Cyprus
Artemis Eleftheriadou, Frederick University, Cyprus
Damianos Zisimou, Independent Artist, Cyprus
Ioulita Toumazi, Independent Curator, Cyprus
Constantinos S. Constantinou, PhD Research Scholar, University of West Attica, Greece
ICPT2024 SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Alexia Achilleos, CYENS Centre of Excellence & Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus
Myrto Aristidou, CYENS Centre of Excellence & Cyprus University of Technology, Cyprus
Alexandra Athanasiadou, PHLSHP-Philosophy & Photography Lab, Greece
Constantinos S. Constantinou, University of West Attica, Greece
Anthony Downey, Birmingham City University, UK
Artemis Eleftheriadou, Frederick University, Cyprus
Andrew Fisher, FAMU, Czech Republic
Christina Gavrielidou, European University Cyprus, Cyprus
Gabriel Koureas, Independent scholar, Cyprus
Nicolas Lambouris, Frederick University, Cyprus
Martha Langford, Concordia University, Canada
Wiebke Leister, Royal College of Art, UK
Sigrid Lien, University of Bergen, Norway
Nina Mangalanayagam, HDK-Valand, Gothenburg University, Sweden
Anastasia Markidou, University of West Attica, Greece
Pam Meecham, University College London, UK
Elena Parpa, University of Nicosia, Cyprus
Io Paschou, University of West Attica, Greece
Despo Pasia, UCL-Institute of Education / independent researcher, UK/Cyprus
Nicos Philippou, University of Nicosia, Cyprus
Mette Sandbye, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Grace Schwindt, Goldsmiths University of London, UK
Maria Shehade, CYENS Centre of Excellence & Cyprus University of Technology
Simon Standing, University of Plymouth, UK
Elena Stylianou, European University Cyprus & Nicosia Municipal Arts Center, associated: Pierides Foundation, Cyprus
Theopisti Stylianou-Lambert, CYENS Centre of Excellence & Cyprus University of Technology
Ioulita Toumazi, Independent Curator, Cyprus
Evi Tselika, University of Nicosia, Cyprus
Liz Wells, University of Plymouth, UK
Lorenz Widmaier, CYENS Centre of Excellence & Cyprus University of Technology
Damianos Zisimou, Independent Artist, Netherlands