CONTACT 2008: BETWEEN MEMORY AND HISTORY

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About CONTACT 2008: BETWEEN MEMORY AND HISTORY

The rapid pace of technology continues to diversify the ways in which we encounter and negotiate photographs on a daily basis. Images are transmitted to a global audience at record speed via the Internet, while cell-phone cameras are commonplace at every social event we attend. We are overwhelmed with images of our daily life, yet somehow depictions of the everyday remain a fundamental source of inspiration and pleasure for all of us. These great contrasts in the ways the ever-multiplying technologies of photography are utilized to document our personal and collective experience, call for an investigation of photography’s relationship to the forms of memory produced through these different types of social documentary and invite the following questions:

Is the reinvention of social documentary as a constructed fiction challenging our relationship with the photographic image as a receptacle for the storage of memories?

How do constructed images co-exist with those that continue to represent “real” social situations?

Which artists reflect a renewed interest in exploring personal and collective societal issues?

How is traditional social documentary photography evolving today?


It is with these issues and questions in mind that we have established the thematic focus of CONTACT 2008 Between Memory and History. This theme will enable us to explore the richness and complexity of imagery depicting social relations and provide fertile ground for discovery, discussion and debate - from explorations of photography as a surrogate for memory to reconstructions of history through photographic representation.

This said, please share your photo and video memory on this CONTACT group.

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