2026 SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst for Exchange
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print this pageRefusal, Residue, and Relational Looking: Photography at the Edge of the Archive
Sonja Langford
Friday, March 20 - 10:00AM to 10:30AM
Atlanta 1
What does it mean to make art in and around archives that have caused harm? In this student presentation, I share my socially-engaged photographic practice rooted in research on American gynecology, illness, and the medical archive. My work considers how artists can ethically engage archival materials—particularly those involving marginalized or medicalized bodies—without replicating the violence of the gaze or the authority of the institution.
Rather than using the photograph to clarify or document, I lean into strategies of refusal, redaction, and relational storytelling. My practice includes image-based artist books, fluxus-inspired scores, and sculptural installations made with materials like lead, thread, and exam room paper. These forms resist spectacle and instead invite reflection, care, and exchange—what I think of as "slow visual conversations." The work is informed not only by historical research, but by my lived experience with illness, diagnostic delay, and care systems.
This presentation reflects on how archival images can be held, reimagined, or transformed through socially conscious making. I consider the ethics of citation and reproduction, and how social practice can extend beyond the frame: into the classroom, the mail, the book, or the body. Photography is not always about what we see—it's about how we engage, with whom, and on whose terms. My talk invites a rethinking of photographic authorship and audience, proposing socially-engaged image-making as a site for ethical inquiry, refusal, and care.
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