Inspired by Arlette Farge’s pathbreaking book, The Allure of the Archives (1989) the seventh Fast Forward conference titled The Lure of the Archive: Photographs of the Home and Heart examines the burgeoning narratives beyond institutionalised archives through vernacular photography, family and personal collections and online archival platforms. Geoffrey Batchen has described the vernacular as “what has almost always been excluded from photography’s history: ordinary photographs, the ones made or bought (or sometimes bought and then made over) by everyday folk from 1839 until now, the photographs that preoccupy the home and the heart but rarely the museum or the academy.” (2000, 262)*

Fast Forward are interested to discover how these most familiar and at times overlooked practices of photography have been used to reshape the very idea of the archive or to draw attention to its erasures and silences. We invite proposals from curators, artists, scholars, practitioners, students and others who critically engage with the vernacular to raise new questions about the past from the vantage point of the contemporary.

You are invited to submit a 500-word abstract to apply to make a presentation at the conference. Questions of interest include but are not limited to:

>> How does vernacular photography by or about women or non-binary communities inform our understanding of public and private histories in South Asia and beyond?

>> How have social media and online platforms promoted an interest in vernacular photography and what sort of projects have gained momentum through the internet?

>> How have museums and galleries responded to these familiar, overlooked and everyday forms of photography in a contemporary moment?

>> What changes with the shifts in the material practice, exhibition and circulation of analogue material in a digital moment?

>> How have contemporary artists interrogated the domain of the personal?

>> How could we interpret unruly images that slip out of their everyday context to become orphaned?

>> How does revisiting the vernacular challenge formations of the normative and offer insights into silenced, repressed, overlooked or under-represented identities?

>> What kinds of methodologies might be used to trace or imagine obliterated and absent histories?

We invite submissions that investigate artistic research, curatorial and collaborative methodologies, conservation and archival concerns, as well as new theoretical and practical discussions around women’s work in the photographic field. We welcome abstracts from a range of scholars, researchers, curators, archivists, students and cultural producers at different stages of their career working in and around the above-mentioned areas. Our primary focus is South Asia and its diasporas though we also encourage applications from speakers dealing with other parts of the world that might be considered to have similar issues.

We particularly encourage Masters and PhD candidates to submit abstracts, and we plan to include a dedicated section within the program to highlight the research of students.

To find out more and submit please go to the direct link.