2026 SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst for Exchange
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"The Ugly Truth-Photography and the Construction of the Anti-Aesthetic"
Steven Skopik (L)
Saturday, March 12 - 11:00AM to 11:45AM
Summerlin D
This lecture examines ugliness as a deliberate visual and conceptual strategy. Commerce with the ugly occurs throughout the history of photography, and includes recently, for example, the often maligned genre of so-called ruin porn-work by image makers such as Christopher Payne, Jan Kempenaers or the team of Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre. What, it may be worth considering, are the virtues of the repugnant? Is ugliness- value as a path towards the sublime, or a counter-example by which we may perceive the beautiful? Is it psychologically sustainable to advocate and inhabit an aesthetic of the vile?
speaker
Steven Skopik
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