Call for Papers: New Perspectives on Contemporary Scottish Photography

The Scottish Society for the History of Photography (SSHoP), also known as Studies in Photography, invites proposals for its inaugural Student Symposium, entitled New Perspectives on Contemporary Scottish Photography. Open to postgraduate students in the UK and abroad, the event will be held online on 19 November 2021.

Following Studies in Photography‘s recent publication of a new edited collection on the ground-breaking exhibition Strategy: Get Arts, staged just over fifty years ago at Edinburgh College of Art (1970), the symposium seeks to reflect on the past five decades of photographic practice and history in/from Scotland. From the medium’s inception to the present day, Scotland has continued to play a significant role in the development of photography and its surrounding discourse, yet many vital voices and histories within this landscape remain overlooked or obscured. With current issues highlighting the urgency for diverse perspectives, we invite papers that engage critically with contemporary Scottish photography to centre marginalised figures, themes, and approaches, challenge dominant narratives, and foreground inclusivity. Papers might address: specific artists, collectives or bodies of work; writing on photography; practices of collection and display; other relevant discursive thematics. To allow for a wide-ranging and inclusive discussion, ‘Scottish photography’ will be considered here in its broadest sense.

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers from postgraduate students at both Master’s and doctoral level. Please email an abstract of no more than 300 words, along with a 100-word biographical note, to sshopsymposium@gmail.com by 24 September 2021. Decisions on the symposium programme will be communicated before the end of September. Studies in Photography will provide some opportunity for papers to be published following the symposium.

Image: Maud Sulter, La Chevelure © Estate of Maud Sulter. All Rights Reserved. DACS, London 2021.