Helsinki Photomedia 2018 focuses on post-truth era via photography

At the end of March, the Aalto University Töölö campus will host an international photo research conference concentrating on the credibility and status of the photo in the present-day "after the truth". The theme of the Helsinki Photomedia 2018 is Reconsidering the “Post-truth Condition”: Epistemologies of the photographic image.

The conference in 26-28 March is fourth in the series of research meetings initiated by the Unit of Photography at Aalto University, organised every two years. The conference is a venue for researchers working on different aspects of photography. It offers various platforms where artistic, philosophical, social, cultural, economical and technological approaches to photography meet. The event brings together researchers from multiple disciplines in order to create new crossovers between artistic and scientific research in photography and their respective themes and methodologies.

Helsinki Photomedia addresses photography as a multi-faceted and changing field of interrelated phenomena encompassing all photographic technologies and the related professional and cultural discourses and practices.

“"The field of research is quite new and there was no recurring international conference when we started in 2012. Now, Helsinki Photomedia has become an anticipated key event in the industry, having some people coming already for the fourth time”, explains the founder of the conference, Professor of Photography and Visual Communication Merja Salo.

Keynote speakers are Professors Robert Hariman from Northwestern University, USA, John Lucaites from Indiana University, USA, and Barbie Zelizer from the University of Pennsylvania, USA, as well as Artist Keynote Professor Walid Raad from The Cooper Union, USA.

Hariman and Lucaites are authors of The Public Image, Photography and Civic Spectatorship (2016) and No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (2007). Zelizer's work on photography includes the books About to Die: How News Images Move the Public (2010) and Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera's Eye (2000). Raad is a contemporary media artist whose works include The Atlas Group project about the contemporary history of Lebanon.

The themes of the three previous conferences have been Images in Circulation (2012), Photographic Powers (2014), and Photographic Agencies and Materialities (2016). Helsinki Photomedia 2018 is organised by Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture in cooperation with four Finnish Universities: University of Tampere, School of Communication, Media and Theatre (CMT); University of the Arts Helsinki; Academy of Fine Arts; and University of Jyväskylä.

The conference language is English.

Date: 26–28 March, 2018

Venue: Aalto University Töölö Campus, Main Building, Runeberginkatu 14–16, Helsinki

For more information:

Conference Manager Saara Mäntylä, Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Tel. +358 50 326 0627, [email protected]

http://helsinkiphotomedia.aalto.fi