Events
Image credit: Cyanotype Workshop with Dr. Bridgette Clarkston, September 2025. Photo taken by: Solange Adum Abdala
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April 21, 2026The Malcolmson Photography Book Collection at UBC: Recognition and Response
The Critical Image Forum is pleased to present a gathering in recognition of the Malcolmson Photography Book Collection at UBC and its impact on research, teaching and learning. An adjacent collection consisting of more than 600 exhibition catalogues, monographs, photobooks, and artists’ books,…
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April 10, 2026Book launch - Andrew Witt’s Lost Days, Endless Nights: Photography and Film from Los Angeles, with a response by Gonzalo Reyes Rodriguez
"Lost Days, Endless Nights: Photography and Film from Los Angeles" (MIT Press, 2025) explores how artists and activists reimagined the aesthetic and political capacities of documentary photography and film from the 1970s to the present. The conversation will be followed by a response from Gonzalo…
Past Events
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April 2, 2026Darkroom Sovereignty: Photography, Race and Belonging in the Canadian Photographic Archive, a lecture by Gabrielle Moser
This lecture examines the photographic archives of Toronto’s University Settlement House to explore the social significance of latent images and the role of photography in shaping race, citizenship, and belonging in Canada. The lecture will be followed by a response by Natasha Bissonauth.What is…
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April 1, 2026Grad Seminar - A Disobedient Gaze: Artists in the colonial photographic archive, a session led by Gabrielle Moser
Guest seminar session with Gabrielle Moser exploring artistic engagements with the colonial photographic archive.What happens when artists look in the photographic archive for realities the colonial common sense has obscured? Thinking of the archive as a darkroom, in which artists operate as…
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March 13, 2026Workshop - Computer Vision and Image Embeddings for Critical Image Analysis with Dr. Laura Nelson
Facilitated by Dr. Laura Nelson, this workshop uses a provided collection of images to introduce computer vision and image embeddings, showing how pre-trained convolutional neural networks can be applied to art and image analysis and exploration.No previous programming experience is required,…
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March 9, 2026Lecture - Distant Viewing and the Multimodal AI Turn with Lauren Craig Tilton and Taylor Arnold
In this talk, Lauren Craig Tilton and Taylor Arnold introduce distant viewing as a theory for understanding how AI systems see images.How do computers see? How can we harness AI to study and communicate the complexities of human culture and society in the past and present? The talk will introduce…
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March 6, 2026From Archive to Exhibition: A Curators’ Tour of the Chung Lind Gallery
Join curators April Liu and Faith Moosang for a special behind-the-scenes tour of the Chung Lind Gallery. Learn how years of research and collaboration shaped this exhibition, drawing from the Chung Collection and Phil Lind Klondike Collection to reveal new and previously unpublished…
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February 23, 2026Lecture - How Ordinary Photos Unlocked History with Catherine Clement
Award-winning community historian, author and exhibition curator, Catherine Clement, will share the story of how ordinary community photographs of common people helped her discover and unlock two forgotten chapters in Canadian history. Clement is a recipient of a Critical Image Forum research grant…
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December 8, 2025Symposium - Graduate Students Showcase Navigating Image Archives
The Public Humanities Hub Graduate Student Showcase is a semi-annual series in which interdisciplinary Graduate research on thematic topics is presented and celebrated. This term’s thematic showcase is co-organized with the Critical Image Forum Research Excellence Cluster.This symposium…
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November 15, 2025Public Lecture: Material + Visuality, with Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Karice Mitchell and Dr. Jasbir K. Puar
Artists Tiona Nekkia McClodden and Karice Mitchell, in conversation with Dr. Jasbir K. Puar, explore themes of representation and legibility
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October 16 - October 18, 2025UAAC 2025 - Critical Image Forum: Grounding Global Image Ecologies
Grounding Global Image Ecologies explores how locally-focused approaches to photographic practices and scholarship exist in dialogue with historical and contemporary global networks of migration, technology, and communication. As attention economies are depleting as the speed of circulating image…
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September 11, 2025Welcome-Back Cyanotype Workshop with Bridgette Clarkson
Welcome-back cyanotype making workshop led by Dr.Bridgette Clarkson
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April 5, 2025Conversation with Mark Sealy and Elliott Ramsey
Please join us at the Polygon Gallery for Capture Photography Festival’s first Speaker Series talk with Mark Sealy, Executive Director of Autograph ABP, who will discuss his curated exhibition, Rotimi Fani-Kayode: Tranquility of Communion with The Polygon Gallery’s Curator Elliott Ramsey. The…
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April 3, 2025Queers on the Run: A Nomadic Workshop in Queer Archives in Canada with Drs. August Klintberg and Erin Silver
Welcome-back cyanotype making workshop led by Dr.Bridgette Clarkson
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April 1, 2025Book Launch and Discussion - Encounter Educational Modernism
The third book in Bitter and Weber’s artist book series on educational modernism, Encounter Educational Modernism is illustrated with archival architectural drawings, curricular material, and contemporary photographs. The book is a critical document on the relationship of education and…
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March 13, 2025Lecture - DeepStateMap: Mapping the Synthetic Battlefield of Ukraine, by Svitlana Matviyenko
Please join us for a Lecture by media theorist Dr. Svitlana Matviyenko, followed with responses by Ilinca Iurascu and M. V. Ramana.
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March 11, 2025Reassemblage in the Relational Film: Nadia Shihab´s "Sitting Room"
An artist talk by Nadia Shihab exploring relational filmmaking, feminist archives, and intergenerational memory through Sitting Room, 1987.
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January 23, 2025Approaching the Archives: Working With and Against Existing Structures
A conversation with Selena Couture and Reilley Bishop-Stall on critically engaging colonial photographic archives as white settler researchers.
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December 5, 2024Vanessa Schwartz Lecture “A By-Product of our Production: The History of Time-Life Books"
This talk reconsiders the history of the photobook through the case of Time-Life Books and photography’s role in mass visual culture
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October 27, 2024Short Film Screening - From Ground Zero: 22 untold short stories in film from Gaza
Presented by From the River to the Sea Collective, with special thanks to Critical Image Forum research cluster, UBC Film Society and the UBC Department of Anthropology, the screening will take place over 2 nights, the first on Oct 17 and a second on Nov 28, both at the Norm…
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October 17 - November 7, 2024Book Launch - Camera Geologica By Siobhan Angus
Camera Geologica: An Elemental History of Photography is a groundbreaking study of photography by art historian, curator, and organiser Siobhan Angus.
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June 1, 2024Photo Walk with Artist Yao Jui-Chung
A photo walk with Yao Jui-Chung exploring abandoned spaces in Kitsilano through photography and conversation.
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May 30, 2024Mirage: a bilingual tour with artist Yao Jui-Chung
A bilingual tour with Yao Jui-Chung and Sandy Hsiu-Chi Lo exploring photography and abandoned public spaces in Taiwan.
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May 29, 2024Mirage: Disused Public Property in Taiwan
Join us for the opening of Mirage: Disused Public Property in Taiwan Get a sneak peek at the exhibition before it opens to the public on May 30th.
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February 1, 2024Artist Talk - Zach Blas with Jayne Wilkinson
A lecture by Zach Blas on CULTUS, followed by a dialogue with Jayne Wilkinson, exploring AI, belief, power, and queer science fiction.
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December 6, 2023A Conversation with Hannah Darabi and Kelly McCormick at The Polygon
Questions of photography and social transformation with Hannah Darabi and Kelly McCormick
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November 22, 2023Nothing Primordial About It: The Political Ecology of Adivasi, Lecture with Nancy Adajania
Nothing Primordial About It: The Political Ecology of Adivasi, Lecture with Nancy Adajania
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November 18, 2023Symposium - Disrupting the Everyday: Women’s Experimental Video and Film
Symposium - Disrupting the Everyday: Women’s Experimental Video and Film
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October 20, 2023UAAC 2023 - Critical Image Forum: Archival Practices and the Networked Image
The Critical Image Forum (CIF) is an interdisciplinary research cluster and public humanities project at The University of British Columbia that focuses on issues related to photography and expanded documentary practice. In 2023-2024, CIF will initiate a SSHRC-funded public program, “Archival…
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October 4, 2023Lecture with Shawn Michelle Smith
Join us on Wednesday, October 4, at 5:30 p.m. for a lecture with Shawn Michelle Smith, presented by the Critical Image Forum and the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, with the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. This in-person lecture will…
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February 8, 2023Contemporary Inuit Art Curating and Making: A Conversation with Heather Igloliorte and Taqralik Partridge
Join us at the Freddy Wood Theatre for a dialogue between Heather Igloliorte and Taqralik Partridge. The speakers will discuss their previous collaborations as well as broader issues in curating and producing contemporary Inuit Art in institutional and community contexts. Heather Igloliorte, an…
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March 10, 2022Film Screening and Q&A: For Paradise with Elizabeth M. Webb
For Paradise is a hybrid documentary that traces the construction of racial identities within a family (the artist’s own) where members operate on both sides of the “colour line.” Allowing the story of her great-grandmother Paradise to guide her through complicated family histories of migration and…
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March 9, 2022Artist Talk - Embodied Cartographies with Elizabeth M. Webb
Join multimedia artist Elizabeth M. Webb for an artist talk – Embodied Cartographies – and film screening – For Paradise. Webb is an artist and filmmaker originally from Charlottesville, VA. Her work is invested in issues surrounding race and identity, often using the lens of her own family…