8th International Conference of Photography & Theory (ICPT2026)
Photography’s Material Conditions:
Residue, Object(hood), and Practices in the Expanded Field
We welcome papers that engage with these questions through historical, theoretical or practice-based approaches. Suggested themes, but not limited to, include:
Photography as Object
The ontology of the photographic object
The paradoxical condition of the object in visual culture
The politics of photographic objects within economies of circulation
The photographic object as relational and performative
Photography as a collectable object, fetish, or commodity
Object(hood) in Contemporary Photography
Object(hood) versus Image(hood) in contemporary photographic practices
Post-medium conditions and hybrid practices
Photography and sculpture: hybrid object(hood) and emergent forms
Installation as interpretation: spatial relations between images and objects
Material and De-Material Conditions
Materiality and digital imaging: from physical prints to virtual existence
Photographic dematerialisation: re-evaluating images
Photography and transmedial material processes
Still and Moving images: temporal crossings and durational experiments
Residues, Traces and Photography’s Afterlives
Resituality as a theoretical framework in image-object relations
Afterlives of images: reuse, reactivation, and remediation
Residual traces in photography: indexical excess, archival debris, and latent histories
Damage, decay, entropy and material failure as generative aesthetic strategies
Curatorial and Exhibitionary Strategies
Documents, artefacts, visual cues, and artworks: reframing photography in a museum context
Curatorial authorship and the mediation of photographic meaning
Display, framing, and context in the exhibition of photographic objects
Virtual, digital, and immersive environments as modes of photographic presentation
We invite proposals for 20-minute presentations from various disciplines, such as: photography, art history and theory, visual sociology, anthropology, museology, philosophy, ethnography, education, cultural studies, and visual and media studies. To propose a paper, please submit a 450-word abstract (including references) through the online submission system.
Application deadline: 15 May 2026
Conference Dates: 26-28 November 2026
To apply, see here: https://www.photographyandtheory.com/
Contact:info@photographyandtheory.com