In Relation: Photography's Communities

Photography Network Symposium

Photography Network will convene its fourth annual symposium in the Sonoran Desert Borderlands city of Tucson, Arizona in partnership with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona. The event will be hybrid (in-person and virtual) and presented in English.

Grounded in the themes that arise in three CCP-organized exhibitions of Latinx photography that will be on view this fall (Louis Carlos Bernal: Retrospectiva, curated by Elizabeth Ferrer; Chicana Photographers LA, curated by Sybil Venegas; and Laura Aguilar: Nudes in Nature, curated by Sybil Venegas and Christopher Velasco), “In Relation” will consider how communities are made visible, defined, and constituted through photography.  

In her book Latinx Photography in the United States: A Visual History (2021), Elizabeth Ferrer writes: “As the photographer/subject relationship shifted from outsider/insider to insider/insider [in the late twentieth century], the photograph became less an ethnographic document than an autonomous and self-validating form of individual and community expression.” This shift highlights questions of agency, circulation, diaspora, and storytelling that are relevant to the practice and institutional interpretation of photography. 

Taking this idea as a point of departure, this symposium features presentations on the ways artists have used photography to probe issues of visibility, belonging, and representation; on the potential for photography to forge connections across distances of all kinds; and on photography as a form of community activism. 

The full schedule and registration details are available on the Photography Network website. If the cost is a concern, you can use the code FREE2024 to have the symposium registration fee waived.