The New Philosophy of Photography
Workshop
Senate House, London (Room 349)

A collaboration between the London Aesthetics Forum at the Institute of Philosophy and the Centre for Research in Philosophy, Literature and the Arts at the University of Warwick

This event is free and open to all but registration is required via our website:
http://bit.ly/philosophyphotography

This workshop brings together philosophers and theorists from the UK, USA, Canada, France, Belgium and Germany to discuss recent developments in the philosophy of photography. Over the last few years, philosophers have belatedly begun to consider the challenge that artists’ use of photography may present for standard philosophical conceptions of photography as a ‘purely causal’ process ensuring ‘belief independent feature tracking’ or ‘natural counter-factual dependence’ of photographs on what they are photographs of. These challenges can no longer be accommodated by ad hoc extensions to existing theories, or by treating artistic uses of photography as a special case. Moreover, it is not only philosophy that is implicated by taking photographic art seriously: such core art theoretical notions as ‘indexicality’ are similarly put into question. This workshop considers philosophers’ attempts to address such problems to date, and asks whether a fundamental re-conception of the field is now required.

Provisional Programme:

Friday 13 February

10.00 Welcome

10.10-10.40: Diarmuid Costello, ‘What’s So New about the “New” Philosophy of Photography?’

10.40-1.10: Dominic McIver Lopes, ‘Abstract Photography’

1.10-2.30: Lunch (own arrangements for non-speakers)

2.30-4.00: Laure Blanc-Benon, ‘Black & White versus Colour: An Issue for the Philosophy of Photography’

4-4.30: Tea & Coffee

4.30-6.00: Bence Nanay, ‘Two-Dimensional versus Three-Dimensional Pictorial Organization in Photographs’


Saturday 14 February

10-11.30: Dawn M. Wilson, ‘Composing, Conducting, Performing, Improvising and Sampling: Photographers Creating Art’

11.30-1.00: Paloma Atencia Linares, ‘Photographic Communication beyond Grice’

1.00-2.00: Lunch (own arrangements for non-speakers)

2.00-3.30: Charles Palermo, ‘Standing a Round: Photography, Agency and Money’

3.30-4: Tea & Coffee

4.00-5.30: Martin Seel, ‘Three Pairs of Pictures (and an Encore)’

5.30-6.30: Concluding roundtable


The workshop is made possible by generous support from the British Society of Aesthetics.