This 2-day conference at Cardiff University in Cardiff, Wales, January 17-18, 2013, will bring together photography practitioners, academic researchers, press officers, journalists and members of community groups to discuss how photographs are used to represent people in situations of conflict or disaster, and to consider the real-world effects that photographic representation can have on the lives of people migrating from one country to another. The conference aims to create an initial forum for on-going dialogue between photographers, media officers, journalists and researchers on photography.
The conference will focus on the ways in which photographs from past times can affect how people are represented today; on the ways in which different sectors use photography to inform or educate; and on how the photographic images used in different sectors communicate with each other and with their publics. The conference will also engage with how people from areas of conflict or disaster view images of themselves by others, and how they use photography themselves. More broadly, the conference will reflect upon on how human rights and individual agency can be promoted and violated through the camera; and the choices that photographers, broadcasters and campaigners make when using photographic images.
The organizers invite paper proposals of 200 words for submission by 8 October 2012, taking a practical, personal or theoretical approach, and referring to any historical period or geographical area. Decisions on proposals will be communicated by e-mail by 22 October 2012. Proposals should be sent to the organising committee at migration(at)cf.ac.uk and may discuss any aspect of the questions suggested below. Conference presentations will be of 20 minutes’ length.
Topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to:
• Are there patterns in the ways in which people in conflict or distress elsewhere are represented in photography?
• How do these patterns of representation affect how people who migrate to other countries are perceived and how well they can integrate and settle?
• How do past photographic representations of people from elsewhere link to contemporary photographs of countries in conflict or disaster situations and the way they are presented?
• How do non-photographic media, such as text and radio journalism, affect responses to photographs of other people?
• How do photographed people in situations of conflict or disaster, or in peacetime, interact with their media representations?
• What kinds of images do indigenous media and NGOs use to represent people in situations of conflict or disaster in their own countries and localities?
• What are the decision-making processes used by photographers picturing conflict and disaster?
• How do image the choices made in news media affect how images are used by development organisations or community groups, and vice versa?
• Where migration is concerned, what are the effects of images on perceptions of migrants, on social integration in host countries, and on the resolution of conflicts at home and in host countries?
• How is the educational role that images of others can have connected to issues of wider power relations between the global South and the global North in making, publishing/broadcasting and viewing images?