Photography.Ontology.Symposium. engages in critical debate with international scholars and specialists on the photographic medium. It will explore the relationship between photography's ontology, the camera as a human perceptual apparatus and the unconscious through themes of evidence, the archive, photographic practice and theory.

• Keynote speakers: ANDRÉS MARIO ZERVIGÓN and SHAWN MICHELLE SMITH with plenary address by MELISSA MILES.
• Symposium speakers: Katherine Biber, Donna West Brett, Helen Grace, John Di Stefano, Danie Mellor and Toni Ross.

Registration: Waged: $50 and Students/unwaged $25.

THURSDAY 2 JUNE 2016

3pm: PLENARY ADDRESS: Melissa Miles (Monash) Photography, Presence and History: Argentina’s Disappeared

6pm:  OPENING ADDRESS: Shawn Michelle Smith (School of the Art Institute of Chicago). Looking Forward and Looking Back: Rashid Johnson and Frederick Douglass on Photography

FRIDAY 3 JUNE 2016

10am-12pm, Session 1. ONTOLOGY/EVIDENCE/ARCHIVE

• Katherine Biber. Dark Archive: Forensic Photography, Visual Evidence and the Museum
• Donna West Brett. Witnessing the Archive: The Stasi, Photography and Escape from the GDR
• Helen Grace. The Plasticity of the Image and the Secrecy of the Device

1-3 pm, Session 2. ONTOLOGY/PRACTICE/THEORY

• John Di Stefano. Witnessing the Self: Making Visible the Displaced Self
• Danie Mellor. The Logic and Contradictions of Proximity
• Toni Ross. Rancière’s Aisthesis and the ‘Politics’ of Unpurposive Action

3.30pm, CLOSING ADDRESS: Andrés Mario Zervigón. Photo Profusion and Walter Benjamin’s Optical Unconscious in the Weimar Era.

This symposium is co-presented by Sydney Ideas, the UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY'S Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, School of Literature, Art, and Media (SLAM), School of Languages and Cultures (SLC), The Power Institute, The Photographic Cultures Research Group and the Art and the Document Research Cluster and Sydney College of the Arts.