To Forget and to repeat : negative and cliché

Conference summary :

If today ‘everyone is a photographer’ one question rarely asked is why? What does it mean to be a photographer today? What might psychoanalysis have to say about this drive to take photographs? The fact that it is so easy to take photographs these days does not answer the question why we do it. Furthermore, is there any kind of continuity between this general impulse to take photographs and the uses of photography in art, for example?

While there has been much discussion of new technologies, which have enabled the avalanche of photography production and distribution, there has been little or no discussion of what effect this has on the persons involved. Beyond the obvious social representative functions of photography (advertising, news, travel) that demands its use, what account can psychoanalysis offer of the drive to take photographs? Can we say the scopic drive is singular or plural? If so, what are they?

Speakers: David Bate, Sharon Kivland, Darian Leader, Vincent Dcahy, Maria Wals, Patrica Townsend