The Center for the Study of Social Difference is pleased to partner with The Walther Collection on the Fall symposium Imagining Everyday Life
What is vernacular photography? Generally defined as the most ordinary or utilitarian form of imagery, vernacular photography ranges from early ethnographic records to family photo albums to today’s social media. The aim of this symposium is to reconsider the uses and meanings of these frequently overlooked photographic practices, ones that often reinforce conventions of social identity but can also become crucial sites of creative resistance and transformation. Speakers from a wide range of academic disciplines will consider vernacular representations of everyday life, offering new ways to think about photography in relation to our political communities, cultural identities, social agency, and daily personal rituals.
The symposium coincides with The Walther Collection’s current exhibition series titled “Imagining Everyday Life,” which will culminate in a major installation curated by Brian Wallis at The Walther Collection in Neu-Ulm, Germany, in 2020.
More information and full program here.
Co-presented by:
The Walther Collection
Center for the Study of Social Difference | Columbia University
School of the Arts | Columbia University
Society of Fellows and Heyman Center for Humanities | Columbia University
Department of Art History and Archaeology | Columbia University
Institute for Research in African-American Studies | Columbia University
Institute for African Studies | Columbia University
Barnard Center for Research on Women | Barnard College
Andrew and Marina Lewin Family Foundation
Documentary Arts
The Walther Collection is an art foundation dedicated to the critical understanding of historical and contemporary photography and related media. Through a program of original research, in-depth collecting, scholarly publications, and extensive exhibitions, The Walther Collection aims to highlight the social uses of photography and to expand the history of the medium. At its three-building campus in Neu-Ulm, Germany, its Project Space in New York City, and with traveling installations worldwide, The Walther Collection presents thematic and monographic exhibitions drawn from its expansive holdings of modern and contemporary photography and media art from Africa, China, Japan, and Europe, nineteenth-century European and African photography, and vernacular lens-based imagery from across the globe. The collection’s exhibition program is complemented by public lectures and screenings, international scholarly symposia, and a critically acclaimed series of catalogues and monographs co-published by Steidl.
