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The National Gallery of Australia is delighted to invite readers of the TAASA Review to a major international conference devoted to the photographic portrait in the first hundred years of the medium in Asia. As the first conference of its kind, it intends to promote inter-regional comparative analyses between scholars working in diverse cultural, national and disciplinary contexts.
FACING ASIA refers to the significance of the camera in the historical depiction of the peoples in Asia. The conference aims to invoke debate on the photographic likeness—its producers, subjects, viewers, and collectors—which will highlight and enhance our understanding of the histories and legacies of such visual materials. It will not only analyse photographic representations of Asian peoples for the global market, but also consider the domestic adoptions and adaptations of photography for local forms of self-representation and cultural practice. Speakers will also consider the studio photograph as collaboration between photographer and sitter, and the diverse performed identities invoked in photographic sittings. Bringing together an international coterie of art historians, anthropologists, area specialists, curators and contemporary artists, this conference intends to provoke debate on the theoretical approaches and contemporary claims to such archives in a field of growing academic, curatorial and public interest.
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