The history of photography has become an increasingly important topic for art history, instigating interdisciplinary dialogue and initiating new approaches to images. This panel discussion brings together three influential curators and historians – Geoffrey Batchen, Elizabeth Edwards and Taous Dahmani – to consider the current state of scholarship in the field.
Each participant will present a short paper, after which there will be a discussion led by Steve Edwards.
This event is organised by Professor Steve Edwards, Manton Professor of British Art and Director of the Manton Centre for British Art, The Courtauld.
With contributions from:
Geoffrey Batchen is Professor of Art History at the University of Oxford. He has taught in Australia, the United States and New Zealand before joining Oxford in 2020. His writing has been published in 23 languages to date and he has curated exhibitions shown in Brazil, Australia, United States, Netherlands, UK, Iceland, Japan, Germany and New Zealand. His publications include many books including the widely cited Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography (1997) and Apparitions: Photography and Dissemination (2019).
Elizabeth Edwards is a visual and historical anthropologist and Professor Emerita of Photographic History at De Montfort University, Leicester, where she was also Director of the Photographic History Research Centre from 2011- 2016. Until 2005 she was Curator of Photographs at Pitt Rivers Museum. Her influential publications include: Camera as Historian: Amateur Photographers and Historical Imagination 1885-1912 (2012); Photographs, Museums, Collections: Between Art and Information (2015) and Photographs and the Practice of History: A Short Primer (2022).
Taous Dahmani is a London-based French, British and Algerian art historian and curator based at The Photographers Gallery. Her projects mainly involve the links between photography and politics. She was the 2022 curator of the Louis Roederer Discovery Award at Les Rencontres d’Arles. With photographer Joy Gregory she recently worked on the MACK books publication Shining Lights: Black Women in Photography in the 1980s and 90s.