2021 SPE Annual Conference Overview

Imagining Legacy: Archives, Collections, and Memoria

When March 18-21, 2021
Where Sheraton Denver Downtown, Denver, CO

A photograph is legacy, a lasting record of a subject, artist, event, culture, moment, or place. These legacies, like history, have often been defined through a colonialist, patriarchal lens that upholds normative narratives of whiteness, obscuring the legacies of others. How have our intersecting pasts shaped the contemporary moment? We live and make art in a time of strategic conflict over the truth—with the photograph as one the most publicly trusted instruments of truth-telling. At the same time, we find ourselves in an era of photographic ubiquity and abundance. What is our role as artists in cutting through the ubiquity to actively reshape the future? A political moment demands that we visit our past – in order to retell, reimagine, rewrite, and redefine more inclusive truths that will deeply affect our future as a global community.  This year, SPE is seeking presentations by artists, scholars, and researchers whose work investigates the world through the lens of legacy.