Abstract
This three-part session aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue between scholars in various fields working on the historical and contemporary problem of photographic knowledge. The papers focus on two sites of photographic knowledge, namely, the archive and the narrative. Archives and studies of archival methodology address the classification and formation of knowledge. How do research mobilization practices complicate and communicate readings of archival photographic collections? Narratives is an overarching theme that ranges from broad historiographical and methodological questions to themes related to content. Critical analysis, which tends to focus on written language, is expanded through attention to image-texts, sequences and clusters—to forms that deliver narratives and counter-narratives. Artist-curatorial projects that bring narratives and/or archives to life will also be discussed. This session seeks to complicate current methodologies or ways of thinking about photography’s epistemic privilege.