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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.

5 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:...

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