What I Learn From You - Charlotte Cotton - SPE National Conference 2026
Posted on 03/21/26 by National in SPE
What I Learn from You
Charlotte Cotton
Saturday, March 21, 2026
SPE Annual Conference: Catalyst For Exchange
Atlanta, March 19-22, 2026
Thank you, SPE Atlanta 2026. It is a genuine honor to be here with you and to be participating in, Catalyst for Exchange. My response is entitled, 'What I Learn from You' and, to dive straight in, the first thing that I learnt from you, before arriving in Atlanta is:
"Always remember those you connect to and who bring you joy".
"Say yes when they ask you to do something".
The first dear person I want to thank for this lesson in life is Jennings Sheffield, who invited me (with Chris Ireland) into SPE for the first time in 2017 South Central chapter conference in Waco, Texas.
In turn, thank you for passing a note last year to Brett Kallusky who gave so much time to me over the past 9 months, with his signature kindness and comradery, to help me understand how this conference was evolving. I appreciate Brett supporting me to come here to Atlanta without a pre-prepared keynote lecture about me, me, me and to, instead, respond in real time to my experience of SPE Atlanta 2026.
I am also so happy to have met Toni Roberts, SPE's executive director, who is clearly, categorically amazing and already trusted and beloved of this precious community. Toni, I've watched people here over the course of the conference – people who treasure SPE, some of who shaped SPE while you were just a toddler, glow with warmth at the mention of your name. You are now forever connected with the most resilient prospects for SPE's future. Your emotional intelligence, your super-strength backbone, and your purposeful low cunning for getting to the shared aims for SPE to thrive are duly noted by us all.
Thank you Alex Heilner for taking time on a crazily busy day to walk me through the behind-the-scenes of this SPE conference. Thank you for introducing me to what I now call "The Team of Teams";
Kim Hanauska – this year's conference producer who is the actual axis/unicorn for non-profit loveliness and high ambitions, in need of serious orchestration.
Anna Murphy – who is brilliant at communicating the narrative of SPE and Atlanta 2026
Thank you to Eve Volkova, SPE's conference lead photographer, and to Ashley Lillian Gann, Katie Carlsen, Kevell Byrd and Natalia Castano for visually capturing what this conference feels like.
Let us all thank them and show our appreciation for all that they have made and done for us here at SPE Atlanta 2026.
I met Eva very briefly as she was returning from a technical walkthrough her Canon camera with the amazing experts in the Exhibit Hall and a discussion about this Herculean task of capturing, editing and storing 1000's of images in real and pressurized time that will become the visual archive of this conference. Eva described her overarching question to the experts as, "How can I make it less hard?" From you, I have learnt that this is perhaps the best first question in any challenging situation.
There is not a single person involved with the planning, delivery, attendance and collective energy that has manifest over the past 3 days who doesn't qualify for the status, politely put of "dealing with a lotright now."
I learn from you all that turning up, as you are, is the greatest act of generosity and positivity we can enact at this moment in time.
I have also learnt from SPE's board of directors that the single-most constructive and creative emotion to bring to close-to-impossible tasks like organizing a 3-day conference for a community of resolute individuals is humor. It comes in many forms. For example, I have learnt that:
- Eric Sung is a classic deadpan comedian.
- Leah Gose is mighty and hilarious.
- Tom Ashe, Skott Chandler and Eric Kunsman make funny trouble from the back seat of a minivan.
- And Janet Pritchard is a Class Act. Full. Stop. If you manage to get a flicker of a smile or a glimmer of a chuckle from her, it is everything.
- Granville Caroll! Thank you for humoring me at my request that the next time we see each other from across a vast, carpeted, windowless landscape of a conference center, you will run towards me with your arms open.
- Louis Chavez! Thank you for not making me regret nonchalantly saying to you that, in your introduction to me today, you should try to "do your worst." I am indebted to you and I will run towards you with my arms open from now on.
What I am re-learning from you all is the togetherness of off-line, face-to-face, in-person participation.
The prince of pedagogy, Paolo Freire has been continually present for me in the past days, reminding us to truly appreciate and share the deeply human condition of our "unfinishedness".
This is a unifying and shared quality, especially resonant at SPE because what I experience is an ecosystem of respect, defined in equal measure by the states of being a student and an educator within us all. Everyone I have talked with at this conference has their own, unfinished story of their experience of SPE's moments of togetherness:
- Educators at their happiest because they have students here today.
- Board members and conference organizers who first came to SPE as students.
- Speakers rushing excitedly to the book launch of their beloved college mentor, who first introduced them to SPE.
I asked Nicky Drake at the Canon booth in the Exhibit Hall if she could describe a distinct characteristic of the SPE attendees that she was meeting. Nicky observed that it was noticeable that the students she was meeting wanted to learn about the best, most ambitious, radically new camera technologies available, while the educators came with an inbuilt reality check, watching the backs of their students, and wanting recommendations for what constitutes the best but the most lean and efficient new technology available.
My final observation about the togetherness of SPE Atlanta 2026 comes from the local partners and community.
SCAD is clearly an amazing partner to SPE and host to the exhibitions that join Atlanta's local students and educators to the beautifully broad terrain of SPE's members. Thank you also to SCAD for your support to bring me here to Atlanta.
Thank you to the archivists at Rose Library at Emory University who prepared a wonderful introduction to their collections and curating an unforgettable selection of books created by Nexus Press, who were an artist book publishers in Atlanta from the late 1970s until the early 2000s of inspirational innovation and care in shepherding unique publications that sing with human creative agency.
Thank you to the High Museum of Art and to Gregory Harris for not only being a prescient curator of photography but for welcoming us all during this SPE conference to appreciate the incredible Blazing Light survey exhibition of Mimi Plumb. Mimi is here with us today at SPE and thank you for being a trailblazer for five decades of an urgent, articulate practice that is so timely for us to learn from at this moment. Thank you for being as gorgeously human and approachable as you hope your idols will be in person. And a shout out to the phenomenal Susan Lipper who joins us here today also and whose participation at SPE is another example of how the photography world at its best, allows us to share and participate in non-hierarchical ways alongside creators who are foundational to our understanding of our medium.
The title of my response to the last three days is, 'What I Learn from You'. It came to me yesterday, as I was savoring every word of Wendel A. White's keynote lecture. Last night, I was in a huddle, briefly stirring the cauldron with some amazing people here at SPE. I suspect our coven leader was Mary Virginia Swanson, with the lovely J Sybilla Smith and my beloved Jennings Sheffield and Libby Rowe.
And Liz Wells! The Liz Wells!
Liz told me a very SPE story about Wendel A. White. It was 1997, the year that Liz's seminal Photography: A Critical Introduction was first published and she was invited to come to Atlanta to present at that year's SPE national conference. Liz was at the podium in a large lecture room with an audience of 7 people. Wendel, who was the conference chair, introduced Liz ahead of her presentation and then took a seat in the auditorium and actively became the 8th member of the audience. Another reminder of SPE's culture of togetherness, and embodiment of how we can simultaneously learn and teach.
I also learn from you that SPE is an open-handed, and ultimately kind reality check on many levels. It's a place that quietly honors the fortitude it takes to juggle education, organizational projects on this scale, and our individual life context, with ongoing research and creative growth. I learn from you what it is taking for each of you to hold your own ground.
I see how – and I personally experience – the collective exchange taking place here and see it as a true catalyst. We will each return to our daily lives with renewed inspiration and fortitude thanks to our participation in this exchange.
Thank you to Tomiko Jones for talking about the feeling of this exchange at SPE and for teaching me a new word to treasure:
"Kuleana" – The Hawaiian word for accountability and stewardship.
At every turn, I've seen photographers supporting photographers and turning up for each other, cognizant of the reality checks we all face in this mercurial world, mindful of each other's contexts and starting point to being here to join the exchange.
The first discussion I listened to on Thursday was the epic, 'Climate Resilience in the American South'. I was learning from the moment the lights dimmed, listening to Allison Grant and then Marni Shindelman. The power of the exchange was clear to me – that I have come here to see and hear this and to learn how to read the character and complexity of our human situation. In both Jeremy Bolen and Oliver Saan & Beatte Giessler's presentations that followed, we were asked to think about creative practices as the means to join the dots, to work out, to read the situation, and to participate in the exchange and check in with reality.
At that moment, in this bodily context, I realized that everyone here in one of the numerous rooms of SPE discussions was simultaneously, actively listening to and seeing each other. Within the first hours of this conference, I learnt that we are in this together.
I brought much more of myself to SPE than I expected. I am sure I am like everyone else here that part of my active listening has involved being aware of who I was summoning from my heart and mind – the people I care about who are not here and who right now would surely be uplifted by the salve of this exchange. I won't linger here but I say their names and send love to Amak Mahmoudian, Shaima Ayoub, Sueraya Shaheen, Shirine Saad. And to my dear Rula Halawani, a photographer and educator at Berzeit University near Ramallah. I gasped with joy that she was here in creative spirit at SPE through her inclusion in Christophe Katrib's humblingly honest and acute presentation that began 'Reflecting the Times: Image Making and Education in the Shadow of Genocide'. I learnt so much from all of the speakers and wrote out resounding lessons from each presentation:
- Shreepad Joglekar, I will gladly join you in being, "full of speculation" about what I see and what it can mean.
- Harrison Moenich, I loved your presentation and your re-defining of "straight photography" is exquisite.
- Stephanie Brown gave us a lesson in how to, "lean into discomfort and curiosity".
- Jason Arel-Klein, I hear you – "dissonance lingers underneath longing".
I have seen so much for the first time thanks to you all. I will not turn away from your generous reality checks and exchanges.
I have also observed so much generous strategy sharing and problem solving in very real senses at SPE. Many sessions so ably created and managed to engage with the realities of the pressures faced in photographic education; in legacy creative industries; and in the amplified precarity of IP rights and human perspective on such a scale as this.
I was really struck by the way that J Carrier opened the exchange of deeply knowledgeable perspectives in, 'After the Glut: Photobook Publishing in the Age of Plenty' provided by Nelson Chan, Matt Eich and Mary Virginia Swanson. J Carrier began with the question:
"What would we need to change to make publishing economically viable for more artists?"
I was reminded of the enduring, whispered chant in the photo community for which I still have great affection:
"How are we going to get the money to do what we want to do?"
One final theme in what I learn from you is about the rich and nuanced facets of photographic practice that centers on personal, institutional and hidden image archives and, to quote Toni Pepe, strategies by which we, "carry a history forward".
I'd like to thank Alice Proujansky for helping me onto this track of thought. Alice is looking after Aperture's booth here at SPE. She is an artist working with archives and also facilitating Aperture's community partnerships in New York schools. In our conversation, we talked about the renewed evidential nature and the graspable dots that can potentially be joined in all manner of ways in photographic archives – and that this present-day critical mass of artists animating archive speaks to an active turning away from, (and legitimate concern with) synthetic, generative AI-powered imaging without explicit safeguarding of human agency.
My last conversation before I headed to my hotel room last night to write this presentation, was with Jason Reblondo who chaired and presented at, 'Cut Time: Collage and the Afterlives of Photographs', with Deboarh Orloff, Janna Ireland and Vanessa Wood. I could not get into this exchange before the session was crowded and spilling into the corridor outside! Thank you, Jason, for thinking through the significance of photographic archives and their "afterlives" and for helping me to grasp the shift in the resonance of alternative photographic processes at this juncture in history.
I am old enough for 'alternative processes' to be a phrase that contains a lingering, troublingly revisionist character – a photographic space that could easily topple into being a terrain where post-colonialism never happened. But, thanks to you all, your photographic energy, your active choices, your strategies that resist amnesia and counterargue in a time of overwhelming, multi-dimensional attrition by design, "I heart alt processes".
Finally, what I have learnt from you is not to be defeated. You teach me not to stop but to own and claim whatever urgently needs to be taken forward. We are in a time that could totally flaw us. I thank you, SPE, for teaching me that the best plan of all is to participate in the real exchange.
