Deadline: June 17th 2021
[No payment from the authors will be required.]
Communication and Media Studies scholars are welcome.
Editors: Carlos Lobo (UCP-EA, CITAR) & Paulo Catrica (UNL, IHC).
Seemingly in our post-truth era, the drifts of contemporary photography practices operate on a global scale, trespassing local and specific cultural settings. Rooted within a plurality of historical genres, mostly Western, i.e. documentary, conceptual, street photography, post-modern, or ‘fine art’, these visual paradigms are instinctively used without reclaiming any critical stance.
One of the prevailing trends is the depiction of the world as a self-portraiture – ‘from my porch’, as a fragmentary visual essay inscribed with poetic significance. A certain return to the modern ‘beautiful photograph’ opposed to the depiction of the world ‘outside’ with its critical and political implications.
To frame this debate we recover, John Schott 1975’s aphorism, ‘what a picture is of and what it is about’ ? By then, William Jenkins commented, comparing Ed Ruscha’s photographs to Schott Route 66 Motels: “… they [Ruscha’s pictures] are not statements about the world through art, they are statements about art through the world”.
Engaging with the discussion of the photographs’ ability to be ideological committed, and considering that myth of representation was wiped out with the rarefaction of the photographic images? We invite article submissions and visual essays that focus on photography contemporary practices in order to critically discuss the hypothetical quarrel between poetics and politics.