2026 SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst for Exchange
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Steven Skopik: "Significant Insignificance-Banality in Contemporary Photography"
Saturday, March 09 - 10:00AM to 10:45AM
State Ballroom
Over the last few decades banality has emerged as a dominant conceptual position and aesthetic sensibility. In contrast to reigning traditions of the early and mid twentieth century-approaches that valorized technical flourish, formal virtuosity, and a relatively earnest expressive register-much contemporary photographic practice has gravitated towards intentionally crude pictorial styles, quotidian subject matter, and a general temper of ambivalence and irony. Contradictorily, this version of banality alludes to a lurking and often fraught significance. Such work acknowledges the photographic medium's many contradictions and communicative limitations, while embracing its nonetheless considerable-and enduring-representational allure.
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Steven Skopik
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