The Photographic Universe: A Conference
The Photography Program in the School of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons the New School for Design, The Aperture Foundation, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, and The Shpilman Institute for Photography jointly present The Photographic Universe: A Conference. This two-day symposium brings together a range of leading photographers, scientists, theoreticians, historians, and philosophers from Parsons as well as other institutions, to reflect and discuss photography at a pivotal moment in its history.
The field of photography is constantly changing. What constitutes a ‘photographer’ or a ‘photograph’ has always been redefined by technological innovations, never more so than during the last two decades of the emerging digital revolution and the Internet. Quite possibly, photography is now at a similar place to where it was during its invention – a time when its cultural significance quickly grew due to fast and innovative technological development. The Photographic Universe: A Conference reflects on this current moment, with the pervasive digitalization of the medium and its speedy permeation into contemporary life. What is the importance of photography as a medium and a discipline? Prominent thinkers and practitioners discuss their roles in the expanding photographic field, evaluate its increasingly blurry relationship between art and life, and speculate on how photographic images will continue to change the way we see our world.
The conference features one-on-one conversations between individuals from disparate professional and research backgrounds. Each speaker contributes a ten-minute presentation on the subject of photography, followed by a twenty minute dialogue between the presenters.
For more information, visit photographicuniverse.parsons.edu
Speaker bios:
Charlotte Cotton is the creative director of the National Media Museum in Bradford, England. Previously she was the curator and head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). From 1992-2004 Cotton was curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and from 2004-2005 the head of programming at The Photographers Gallery in London. Cotton has been visiting professor at Yale University and visiting critic at colleges including Bard, SVA, Cranbrook, Otis College, Art Institute Chicago, USC, Parsons the New School for Design and UC Riverside. She is the author of Imperfect Beauty (2000), Guy Bourdin (2003), Then Things Went Quiet (2003) and The Photograph as Contemporary Art (2005 and 2009). She is also the founding editor of wordswithoutpictures.org. nationalmediamuseum.org.uk
David Reinfurt is a graphic designer in New York. Since 2000, he has run O R G inc., a graphic design practice that works for cultural and educational institutions in a range of media. Prior to forming O R G, David was an interaction designer with IDEO San Francisco, where he designed the interface for the MTA MetroCard vending machines. He has been a visiting critic at design schools including University of Texas, Gerrit Rietveld Akademie, Yale University, and Royal College of Art. David holds degrees from University of North Carolina, Yale University School of Art and teaches Design and Redesign in the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University and Introduction to Computational Form at Yale University. O R G was incorporated on the first business day of the new millennium.
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