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2027 SPE Annual Conference: Community in Contrast

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Rennan Kooistra

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Self Soothing
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48:1 Spring 2015

Exposure
Journal

48:1 Spring 2015

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Elena (@thinstring) and Nate (@natelarsonphoto) are excited to co-chair a panel for the 2027 SPE Conference (@spenational) in Minneapolis. The call for participation went live today - if your work/practice/ethos are a match, perhaps you’ll share with us for possible inclusion? Submission information here: https://www.spenational.org/2027sessionlist Beyond Documentary: Reimaging Expanded Practices Co-Chairs: Nate Larson (@natelarsonphoto) & Elena Volkova (@thinstring) This panel will consider photography as a collaborative, process-driven practice that can foster resilience within communities shaped by trauma. Expanding documentary modes, strategies to be discussed will emphasize participation, co-authorship, and ethical accountability, positioning image-makers in a continuing and expanding partnership with their subjects to promote belonging, create space for agency, self-representation, and shared narrative control. Central questions include analysis of power: who controls representation, how images circulate, and what responsibilities do practitioners have to/for/with communities with whom they engage? We will also explore how participants actively shape the conditions of their own visibility, while negotiating and redirecting the gaze to challenge histories of marginalization and imposed ways of seeing. The panel will also explore the nature of long-term and ongoing engagements: how do relationships form and change over time and how does this shift the work itself? How can social practice and engagement support dignity and community resilience over expanded timeframes? We invite panel submissions from photographers, social-practice artists, and artist collaboratives that work in socially and community engaged, and/or expanded documentary practices and are willing to share critical moments, vulnerabilities, and successes within their work.

4 days ago via Instagram

Elena (@thinstring) and Nate (@natelarsonphoto) are excited to co-chair a panel for the 2027 SPE Conference (@spenational) in Minneapolis. The call for participation went live today - if your work/practice/ethos are a match, perhaps you’ll share with us for possible inclusion? Submission information here: https://www.spenational.org/2027sessionlist Beyond Documentary: Reimaging Expanded Practices Co-Chairs:...

Witching Hour returns @spenational 2027 in Minneapolis, MN Witching Hour 2 expands the conversations initiated during the 2026 SPE Witching Hour panel, where panelists and attendees expressed a desire for deeper dialogue surrounding how witch identities intersect with artistic practice, pedagogy, research, and institutional spaces. This session invites presentation proposals from lens-based practitioners whose work engages ritual-based image-making, documents queer and occult communities, explores alternative systems of collective knowledge and magical pedagogies, radical experimentation, studio “weirding,” classroom rituals, community collaboration, and navigating making and being within the institution. We welcome presentations addressing how students engage in photographic ritual, how educators cultivate radical pedagogies rooted in care and embodiment, and how communities form within and beyond academic spaces. Particular attention will be given to projects that foster collective activation, collaborative research, and unexpected forms of support among peers, students, and broader communities. With a focus on speculative, experimental, and mysterious studio practices that propel artistic research, Witching Hour 2 proposes a nontraditional conference format that encourages participation beyond the standard lecture model. Participants are invited to enact visual ephemera, temporary altars, performative gestures, and collaborative activations that blur the boundaries between presentation, ritual, and communal gathering. Through collective reflection and embodied exchange, this session aims to create space for alternative modes of learning, visibility, resistance, and belonging within contemporary lens-based practice. This session will be co-chaired by artists Zen Cohen and Stephanie Dowda DeMer. Submissions due July, 31, 2026: spenational.org/2027sessionlist #spenational #witchinghourpanel #sistersofthelens #photocoven #witchesinacademia

5 days ago via Instagram

Witching Hour returns @spenational 2027 in Minneapolis, MN Witching Hour 2 expands the conversations initiated during the 2026 SPE Witching Hour panel, where panelists and attendees expressed a desire for deeper dialogue surrounding how witch identities intersect with artistic practice, pedagogy, research, and institutional spaces. This session invites presentation proposals...

How to Submit - Community in Contrast

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How to apply to be a part of Community in Contrast SPE's 64th Annual Conference.

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