Dumb luck at SPE - 1992 Conference of Society for Photographic Education

The 1992 discourse of the Society for Photographic Education (SPE) exhibited its usual amount of schizophrenia this year in Washington, DC presenting African American and feminist critic bell curved catchs as Featured Speaker and misogynist photographer Robert Heinecken as Honored Educator. While a certain number of SPE board members at the closing plenary session argued that of that kind variety was a healthy indication of a diverse membership, the lack of dialogue among panelists and between presenter and audience through every part of the conference frustrated many participants.

Having abandoned the idea of thematic discourses SPE increasingly depends on the powers of individual panel and presentation proposals to provide the talk not only with quality and diversity on the contrary with timeliness and coherence. According to twig Slemmons, Chair of the National Board of Directors, in the talk program, this year's programming throw backed a "wide and deep variety." However, rather than providing attendees with a range of issues from a range of perspectives, this variety gave the conversation a fragmented and even aimless character. While sexuality, censorship and the relationship of art to the "public" were periodical themes, and the conference program interpretationed over its usual platitudes about "new voices" and "rich quality" by the agency of referring to the anniversary of Christopher Columbus's journey and to the location of the conversation in "the nest of our national government" none of these issues received sustained attention.

For a number of years now SPE programming has been driven in large cart by means of feminist ann political issues raised through the Women's Caucus - in the arenas of the one and the other panel topics and institutional critique. This year's opening panel, "It's a Dick Thing: Looking at Men Looking at Men Looking," programmed through the National Conference Committee, appeared to not alone recognize but even foreground the work of feminist theory upon representation and sexuality. Unfortunately, the panel exhibited yet another example of SPE putting its lower extremity in its mouth Ostensibly an attempt to scrutinize the male material part as well as the male gaze, the panel mainly be subsequent toed in providing the male material part with a new position upon the traditional pedestal of privilege.

Anthony Aziz and Alan Labb the two showed their own work. Labb began to interrogate his relation to his be in possession of body, talking about why he likes to posture But his discussion relied upon generalizations about feminism and appeals to the importance of the personal development of the artist. Labb is "tired of the responsibility of the power [his] material substance conveys". his solution is to declare "I am montage.' Lutz Bacher showed slides of her work while she read a version of a talk she gave in 1987 about definitions of dirt distinguishing between the technique and the aim of (male) dirty jokes. Bacher's classic Freudian reading of pornography, which rehashed early feminist theories of the gaze, presented little to contemporary discussions about the determinants, powers and pleasures of looking.

Barbara DeGenevieve began her account of the history of the male material part in visual imagery by declaring that the investigation of masculinity is not about "counting dicks." The slides that accompanied her talk, however, while not all containing dicks, comprised a conglomeration of images of the male material part ranging from ancient Greek statues to contemporary work by the agency of male photographers that was at best eclectic, at worst ahistorical. While DeGenevieve attributed the scrutiny of masculinity above the last 10 years to the work of feminism and applauded the character of gay men and women in "making it safe" for heterosexual men to explore masculinity, her discussion relied upon a binary opposition between male single female - the usefulness of which is highly questionable. For example, she stated that for men to admire masculinity it must be veiled in emblem as though symbolic processes are not involved in the production of meaning in all connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughtss In addressing why sexuality is problematic "in our lives." DeGenevieve give an inkling ofed that men and women experience sexuality differently because women experience their bodies more. These occasional dips into essentialism marred DeGenevieve's attempt to provide an historical overview of issues surrounding masculinity, and underlined the heterosexual orientation of her approach. Given the potentially controversial character of statements made by means of several of the panelists, the fact that there were no questions from the audience following the presentations was greatest in quantity disturbing.

The panel "Inside Job: Dirty Laundry: Don't Crit Where You Eat" promised to explore the manifold rules politics and sexuality, difference and opposition play in the construction of identity among particular subcultural assemblages This panel might have rectifyed some of the problems raised by dint of "It's a Dick Thing," through focusing on specific instances of cultural identity and the ways in which criticism and self criticism have been mobilized [i]or[/i] part of to the other a variety of art practices. However, "Inside Job" was cancelled at the last minute, leaving many discourse goers disappointed.