Conference: Figures & Fictions: The Ethics and Poetics of Photographic Depictions of People

24 & 25 June 2011 

Hochauser Auditorium, Sackler Centre for the Arts, V&A

Figures & Fictions focuses on the representation of people. This conference, will address the way contemporary and recent South African photography stages, complicates and contests identity in a huge variety of practices. Papers will examine the ethnographic past as well as historic documentary practices and portraiture, to explore the various ways in which humans have been depicted in this region. Contemporary photographers will discuss their work in relation to this photographic past. Critics, artists and historians will engage in debate about the politics, ethics and artistic strategies of picturing people in South Africa.

In collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Contemporary Art, University College London.

Speakers include Achille Mbembe, Elizabeth Edwards, Tamar Garb and artist Jo Ractliffe.

The conference is part of the events programme accompanying the Figures & Fictions exhibition at the V&A, which is being curated by Tamar Garb,

Durning Lawrence Professor in the History of Art at UCL.

See http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/exhibitions/figures-fictions/