Concept Album: Photography in Writing and Curation (Online Symposium)

1:00 PM

Track 01: Writing a Photobook

With Carlos Loret de Mola, Fernando Gallegos, and Freddy Martinez. Introduction by Amy Touchette

Fernando Gallegos is an editor and designer of photobooks, as well as a writer and cinematographer based in Monterrey, Mexico. Carlos Loret de Mola is a photographer and co-publisher of Los Sumergidos, an international creative collective based in New York and Mexico that produces and distributes photography-based art publications and related projects, of which Gallegos is also a founding member. Regular collaborators in book production, Gallegos and Loret de Mola will discuss and present the literary and cinematic influences that shape how Gallegos creates photobooks with artists/authors.

2:00 PM 

 Track 02: A Basket of Hammers

With Odette England

3:00 PM

 Track 03: Word, Picture, and Videotape

With Nina Strand, Lillian Davies and Catherine Taylor 

4:00 PM

 Track 04: Afterword

With Alan Huck and David Campany

11:00 AM 

Track 01: Beautiful Men—Who is Permitted to Appear Differently?

With Debmalya Ray Choudhuri and Dimitri Stefanov. Moderated and organized by Velina Stefanova and Gene Tolan

Join photographers Debmalaya Ray Choudhuri and Dimitri Stefanov for an intimate conversation about masculinity, photography, and desire through the interconnected ideas of Inheritance, Intimacy, and Appearance. Beautiful Men asks how masculinity is learned and embodied, what intimacy can unsettle, and ultimately, who is permitted to appear differently.

12:00 – 12:15 PM

Break

12:15 PM

Track 02: Who Carries Memory Forward?

With Anurag Banerjee, Veejay Villafranca, and moderator Veeranganakumari Solanki. Organized by Sumit Bhattacharya and Abbby Madriaga

Bringing together photographic practices from India and the Philippines, this conversation explores memory as something continuously constructed through place, identity, culture, and lived experience. 

1:15-1:30 PM

1:30 PM

Track 03: Photographic Vision and the Experience of Place—From Personal Perception to Environmental Responsibility

With Morten Andersen and Marine Lanier. Moderated and organized by Cathrine Wessel and Julien Galland

Two interconnected questions about the photographer’s personal relationship to place: to what extent does a particular environment shape the photographer, and to what extent does the photographer shape our understanding of the landscape? 

2:30-3:00 PM

3:00 PM

 Track 04: Photography at 200: Who Writes the Archive?

With Sagrario Berti and Costanza De Rogatis. Moderated and organized by Mariana Mendoza

On the occasion of photography's bicentennial, researcher Sagrario Berti and artist Costanza De Rogatis examine the photographic archive as a contested site of power. Berti traces how a Latin American photographic collection was organized and interpreted differently under private and public ownership; De Rogatis reactivates archival images through Piel y manos, developed in collaboration with deafblind participants. Together, they ask who builds the archive, who is represented within it, and who gets to reinterpret it. 

4:00-4:15 PM

4:15 PM

 Track 05: After Visibility 

With Krista Svalbonas and Wiktoria Michalkiewicz. Moderated and organized by Katie Tackman and Emese Mucsi

This conversation explores how curators and institutions can support artists beyond visibility, with a particular focus on American and Eastern European photography and the points of convergence within the regions’ intertwined histories—political transformations, conflicts, and forms of resistance—while preserving artistic autonomy and the complexity of individual practices. Through solidarity and cross-cultural dialogue, the conversation asks how locally rooted artistic practices can achieve meaningful and sustained international visibility, and what examples of this kind of advocacy, and artist management can inform responsible curatorial practice. 

5:15 PM