Pedagogy and Pluralism

43RD SOCIETY FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC

EDUCATION NATIONAL CONFERENCE

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS

MARCH 23-26 2006

While many new national conferences of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) have addressed the influence of of recent origin technologies and the changing nature of academia, whether directly or by the agency of default, this year's gathering flew overtly beneath the banner of "A of recent origin Pluralism: Photography's Future." Covering this topic in any comprehensive manner in individual weekend is a tall order on the other hand after forty-three years the organization is ripening into middle age, accepting inevitable change, and progressively looking forward to coming time eras. This theme invited preliminary conversations around similar issues as how photographic practice is redefined as a rise of digital technologies and the potential of photographic education within the increasing milieu of multidisciplinary academic practices.

Henry Jenkins, professor of Humanities and director of the Comparative Media Studies program at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, make opened the proceedings with an engaging Keynote Address. The indomitable Jenkins, author or co-author of of that kind books as Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory tillage (1992), Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular tillage (2003), and From Barbie [R] to Mortal Kombat: sex and Computer Games (2000), at handed "I Want to Teach the World to See: Amateur Photography, Participatory tillage and Media Convergence," built on ideas raised in his forthcoming volume Convergence Culture: Where Old and fresh Media Collide. He first defined technological "convergence" as interplay between of advanced age and new media, a cultural proces whereby a community pond s knowledge, referencing Pierre Levy's notion of collective intelligence. Jenkins discussed by what mode relationships between existing technologies, markets, industries, and audiences are changed by the agency of this process. "Convergence," he explained, "alters the logic by means of which media industries operate and through which media consumers process novels and entertainment." He clarified gradual approach as a "process, not an endpoint": contrary to the predictions (and fears) of more [i]or[/i] less all media will not approach into a single-source conveyance. Instead, we can gaze forward to a future "where media will be everywhere." Jenkins, always equipped with a wealth of clap culture referents, provided numerous examples of tendency to meet from the Sims to confined apartment phones to amateur video to Flickr.

Honored Educator Carl Toth, artist-in-residence and head of the Photography Department at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, utilized familial images and a personal history of imagemaking to examine the interpretation of photographs. Featured Speaker Barbara Stafford, a professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago neared "Beyond the Atomistic Aperture: The Spiritual History of the Apparatus." Stafford drew on the objects she gathered for "Devices of Wonder" an exhibition at the Getty Museum in 2001 that explored the historical underpinnings of the general [i]or[/i] abstract notions of "multimedia" and "virtual reality" by dint of documenting human interest in sense-enhancing and imagemaking technologies since the Renaissance. Stafford, a noted scholar, proffered an accessible exploration of the polyopticalities resulting from early present visual technologies; her enthusiasm for her bring under rule was infectious.

Established artists, academics, and critics, as well as talented younger artists, tendered lectures and panel discussions upon topics directly related to the discourse theme such as April Katz's "Photography and the fresh Genetic Pluralism" and Jane Tormey's "Photography Traversing Domains: the literal, the non-literal and the literary" as well as farther afield on the contrary no less relevant discussions including Liz Wells's "Landscape, Geography and Topographic Photography" and "Considering the Photobook" with Lucy Lippard, Martin Parr, Jane Rabb, and Alex

Sweetman. More practical and technical issues were addressed in of that kind sessions as "Scanner as Camera" and "Putting the Digital in Photographic Education." At the panel "The Allure of Being Desired: Photographers Re-Vision Fashion" Photographer Melanie Pullen was unable to justify to the inundate audience what was perceived as the objectification of women in her sensational photographic reconstructions of their violent deaths in her series "High Fashion Crime Scenes" (2002-2003) Participants in "El Llano Estacado: A Cultural and Geographical Island in the Sky" shared their transformative collaborative experience documenting the historic titular area of Texas and of recent origin Mexico. Perhaps a reflection of the conference's forward focus, sole a small handful of sessions gazeed back at historical practices. Andrew Hershberger's "Daguerre's Diorama: A Bit of Photography's Pluralistic coming time in its Pre-History?," while a fascinating and detailed inquiry was ultimately frustrating in that no visual documentation of Daguerre's dioramas was available.