The Invisible Image: Photography and the Unseen

This conference is a collaboration with Open Eye Gallery, and is held at Open Eye Gallery, 19 Mann Island, Liverpool, L3 1BP. There is a limited capacity due to the size of the gallery, so please book as soon as possible. Booking details are at the bottom of the page. Please note, most, if not all, talks will be videoed and the videos made available via Open Eye. The conference will not be live-streamed.

Programme

DAY 1: JUNE 18  

9.-9.30 registration and coffee 

9.30 Welcome - Michelle Henning

10 am Introduction: Jamie Jelinski

KEYNOTE 1  Jordan Bear, ‘Lurking Unsuspected’: Visibility and Purity in Photography’s Media 

11 am coffee 

11.15  Panel 1  Archival Absences Chaired by Alyssa Grossman

•Tom Allbeson, Picture Post at home & abroad: Seeing and not seeing imperial citizens in postwar British photojournalism  

•Patricia Hayes, Unseen: the underworld of unprocessed photographs from the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa (1980s)   

12.15  Panel 2  Concealment and Public Space Chaired by Les Roberts

•Annie Rudd, Invisible Photographers: Walker Evans, Candid Cameras, and “Vanity”    

•Godehard Janzing, An invisible Shooting Scene? Daguerre's “Boulevard du temple” and Fieschi's “infernal machine” 

•Donald Weber, Infrastructural Walking: Photography as Residual Registration 

1.45 lunch break 

2.15 Panel 3  Latent Sensitivities Chaired by Hana Kaluznick 

•Aindreas Scholz, Invisible Botanies: Anna Atkins’s Cyanotypes, Chemical Latency and Climate Change 

•Ellen Yiwei Wang, Unseen Images and Latent Media: Thoughtography and Spirit Photography in Japan 

3.15 tea break 

3.30  Panel 4  Strategies of Recognition Chaired by Jordana Blejmar
•Laura Love, Using vernacular photography to ground an art historical approach to trans bodies in the UK 

•Antonia Deus, Artistic Strategies of (In)Visibility in Contemporary Iranian Portrait Photography 

•Emily Beswick, An archive of hybridity: photographs of mixed individuals and communities in early 20th century Liverpool 

5pm end

drinks reception at the Stable Gallery, St George's Hall for 6pm, followed by optional conference dinner at 7.30 

DAY 2: JUNE 19 

9.30-10 coffee 

10am Introduction: Jordana Blejmar

KEYNOTE 2 Estelle Blaschke, Entangled Invisibilities in AI Photography

11.am  Panel 5 Archives and Coloniality Chaired by Sarah Okpokam

•Erin Pauwels, Invisible Backdrops and Archival Afterlives: Recovering Agency in Indigenous American Delegation Photographs  

•Anne Cross, From Slave Auction to Art Auction: Disappeared Tintypes of the ‘Princess Madia’ and the Politics of the Unseen 

12am  Panel 6  Law Enforcement and Institutional Images Chaired by Jamie Jelinski

•Donna West Brett, Photographic Anxiety: Surveillance and the Unseen 

•Kylie Thomas, Shallow Abyss 

•Clara Trivellato, A Game of Hide-and-Seek: Microdots and Latent Images in the Stasi's Cold War Operations 

1.30 lunch 

2.00pm Panel 7 Images and Infrastructures Chaired by Wallis Motta
•Ángeles Donoso Macaya, Against “shadows of imprecision”: elucidating the “invisible” visual infrastructure of women peasants’ organizing against pesticides in Chile (1985 – present)   

•Mi Zhou, Material Infrastructure of Personal Photography in the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) 

•Thale Elisabeth Sørlie, Uncovering an invisible and profound integration of photography in modern infrastructure   

3.30pm Panel 8  Technology and Invisibility Chaired by Michelle Henning

•Franziska Barth, Capturing the RAW 

•Yanai Toister, Potential Picturability 

4.30 pm closing remarks / end