Photography archives are more than just collecting, writing about, and curating. Recent discussions over the world confirm that archives are responsible for major changes in many discourses – institutional, educational, historical. They provide necessary impulses for networking and raise awareness about the urgency to protect valuable documentation (even considering those that has not yet been discovered), while encouraging new knowledge through continuous research and interpretation. Archives are inevitable in critical thinking on how the past has impacted our contemporary moment. Photographic archives offer an important cultural testimony and a strategic means to raise awareness on history and reconsider it in the light of civilisational values that have been threatened throughout history. This is especially urgent in case of women photographers, that have been predominantly left out of the collecting discourse.
Numerous archives exist in institutions all over the world; yet, many of them are still lacking attention from researchers and the general public. In addition, many photographers and/or members of their families continue to keep archives in private hands, often without basic knowledge about how to maintain them and open them to the public, or how to connect with institutions, at least partially. Aim of this conference is to explore the ways in which photographs have been archived and collected, as private belonging and/or public ones, to look for new tools and processes that help raise awareness of the role of photography archives, and grow their social relevance. We are also encouraging contributions related to the vast network of knowledge and skills needed in photographic practice, study, circulation and collaboration, while also highlighting social, political, representational discourses of the history of photography and its present, as well as contributions from the point of view of history, critical theory, art history, visual studies, archival studies, anthropology, and other humanistic and social disciplines. We invite researchers, curators, professionals in archives and private owners to overcome invisibility and raise the voice of the margins, creating a trajectory between the underrepresented, migratory, unseen records and the institutions with better, even privileged status.
ORGANIZED BY: Institute of Art History, Zagreb; Magnum Photos Endowment Fund, Paris; Spéos International Photographic Institute, Paris; Deusto University, Bilbao; Office for Photography, Zagreb