Mention photography within the context of Spain and South America and a series of practitioners spring readily to mind: Sebastiao Salgado; Manuel and Lola Alvarez Bravo; Sara Facio; Graciela Iturbide, Cristina GarcÌa Rodero and Alberto Schommer. To invoke the photographic in these contexts, however, is also to summon a rich documentary tradition within which the images becomes a crucial site for both ideological dissemination and resistance: from Frank Capa’s dramatic images of the Spanish Civil War to the Christ-like Che Guevara in death; including the photographs of Mexican revolutionaries and the photo-portraits of los desaparecidos in the Southern Cone.

Flashes...

Photography has been instrumental in shifting earlier perceptions of reality and the past into modern and post-modern culture. It also constitutes a global practice of vital relevance to explore the potential and limitations of visual culture.

Visions...

Mindful of photography’s status as a medium of representation that cuts across cultural, social, historical and artistic practices, this conference will provide a critical forum for practitioners and academics from a wide range of institutional and cultural backgrounds. It aims to bring into focus and generate debate around the status and significance of the photographic image and practices in Spain and Latin America. Sessions will include papers that explore the role of photography in areas of cultural relevance such as: memory and history; the representation of gender and sexual identities; boundaries and borders; critical reception and the visual rhetoric of the image; symbolic economies; and death.

Proposals should consist of title, brief outline (approx. 500 words), name and affiliation, short list of publications/experience and be sent by e-mail to andrea.noble@dur.ac.uk and a.sanchez@bbk.ac.uk The deadline for receipt of provisional titles and firt draft abstracts is 20 November 2001 and notification of acceptance or rejection will be made by the 7th of January 2002. Proposals accepted should aim to provide a paper of 25 minutes duration (2,500-3,000 words in length) an a short abstract. A selection of papers will form the basis of a post-conference publication.This conference will also provide the space to hold an exhibition of the participants’ photographs. Those interested should contact the conference organisers as early as possible: Andrea Noble (University of Durham) and Antonio Sánchez (Birkbeck College).