CIF Event:
A Conversation with Hannah Darabi and Kelly McCormick at The Polygon

Questions of photography and social transformation with Hannah Darabi and Kelly McCormick

This conversation with From Slander’s Brand exhibition artist Hannah Darabi and historian Kelly McCormick explores Darabi’s critical project on the photo books published during the early years of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 recapturing the potential that revolutionaries and governments saw in photographs. Through Darabi’s work, we uncover the possibilities and limits of photographs as they are changed, manipulated and turned into icons.

This event is presented by the Critical Image Forum in collaboration with the UBC Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory and the Polygon Gallery. Critical Image Forum is a collaboration between the Belkin and the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at UBC.

ABOUT THE EPISODE

For this second episode of the Critical Image Forum Dialogue Series, Daniela Perez Montelongo is in conversation with South African photographer Paul Weinberg where they discuss key issues pertaining to the role of photography in South Africa during the Apartheid and post-Apartheid eras. These include the changes in Weinberg’s way of working and taking photographs during the democratic transition during the end of Apartheid, his 1994 project Moving Spirit, which investigated a wide range of spiritual practices in South Africa, and his approach to teaching photography and role as a mentor for new generations of South African photographers. The last section of the conversation focuses on Weinberg’s exceptional work as an archivist committed to the preservation and democratization of South and Southern African archives, alongside his vision for The Photography Legacy Project, an ongoing endeavour to digitize these photographic archives. In the wake of the recent devastating fire at the University of Cape Town’s library in April 2021 and the destruction of some its most precious collections, Weinberg’s relentless call for the conservation of both physical and digital African photographic archives could not be more timely.

REFERENCES

Azoulay, Ariella. Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. London: Verso, 2019.

Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981.

Buergel, Roger M. “The Migration of Form.” Documenta 12, 2007.

Cassirer, Ernst. Language and Myth. New York: Dover Publications, 1946.

Howe, Susan. Spontaneous Particulars: The Telepathy of Archives. New York: New Directions Publishing, 2014.

Jacob, Luis, curator. Form Follows Fiction: Art and Artists in Toronto. Toronto: Art Museum at the University of Toronto, 2016.

PRESENATIONS

Presentation I
Andrew Gayed – Visual Pedagogies: Decolonizing the History of Photography (5:00)

Presentation II
Susan Laxton – Public Entanglements: New York Paris Tokyo New York Paris (27:00)

Presentation III
Entangled Global Relations: A Conversation between Jin-me Yoon and Erina Duganne (54:00)