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2026 SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst for Exchange

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Re-Remembering: Photography at the Intersection of Archive, Memory, and Identity

Ashely Kaushinger: Savannah Dodd, Sonja Langford, Jean Shon, Fazilat Soukhakian

Saturday, March 21 - 2:30PM to 4:30PM
Atlanta 2

Photography has long occupied a powerful position between documentation and creation, particularly in its relationship to archives, memory, and identity formation. This session explores how photographic practices can actively shape historical narratives rather than merely recording them. Moving beyond photography's documentary function, the session examines how artists and researchers use photography as a critical tool to interrogate archival materials, disrupt linear historical narratives, and recover suppressed stories, particularly those of women and marginalized groups.

The session addresses critical questions: How does photography contribute to constructing and deconstructing historical narratives? What strategies can photographers employ to recover experiences that have been systematically excluded from archives? How might material interventions with photographs create new possibilities for remembering?

By examining photography's relationship to archives, memory, and identity construction, this session contributes to vital conversations about whose histories are preserved, how memories are constructed, and how photographic practice can challenge archival authority. Photography can function as critical memory work, revealing how societies remember—and strategically forget—marginalized historical presences. How might photography reshape the future through interrogating the past?