Photographic Subjectivities: Seeing, Being Seen, Refusing the Frame

What does photography make possible for those rendered invisible, hypervisible, or misrepresented in dominant visual cultures? In an era of globalization on an unprecedented scale, what continuities might emerge across culturally and politically grounded photographic practices?

Inspired by the ever-growing body of scholarship on photography’s role in identity discourse, this panel invites proposals that explore the shifting relationships between image-making, representation, and power across geographical and temporal localities. There are no regional or time-period limitations; in fact, we are especially interested in work that stretches, overlaps, or complicates those boundaries. We welcome contributions that examine photography as archive, practice, method, or social practice.

Ideally, papers will bring together diverse transdisciplinary approaches from art history and visual culture to Indigenous studies, Black studies, queer theory, critical disability studies, Latinx studies, or media archaeology. From this, we hope to open up new conversations around photography’s role in shaping and complicating subjectivity. As images continue to flood our everyday lives on proliferating fronts, this panel aims to gather a broad range of perspectives that can reveal the tensions and possibilities within photography towards decolonial praxis.