2026 SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst for Exchange
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"The Very Uncertainty of Photography": A Brief Theoretical History
Andrew Hershberger
Saturday, March 08 - 9:00AM to 10:00AM
Tuscany 9
"[T]he very uncertainty of photography's status, its increasing technical versatility, and the variety of its worldly functions, combined to make it from the beginning a powerful force of change." So wrote MOMA's Peter Galassi in his catalog Before Photography. While Galassi claimed that photography's function as "a powerful force of change" benefited from the uncertainty surrounding the medium, throughout the history of photographic theory authors have been split about the benefits and/or costs of the medium's ambiguities. This dynamic fluctuation of photography's uncertainties provides a window through which one can view a brief, but surprisingly evocative, history of photographic theory.
speaker
Andrew Hershberger
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