Hidden (Hi)stories: New Perspectives of Women’s Photographies

17-19 May 2024
MOMus -Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, Thessaloniki, Greece

MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography announces the Greek edition of Fast Forward: Women in Photography, which is organised in partnership with the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) and London College of Communication (LCC) at University of the Arts London Photography (UAL) and the University of Sunderland.

The research project Fast Forward: Women in Photography aims to explore the work and histories of women photographers, promote opportunities and question ideas dominating the field of photography by initiating thoughtful, new debates. Initiated in 2014 with a panel discussion at Tate Modern, the project has become significant within the world of photography for examining the work of women photographers and for questioning the way that the established canons have been formed.

Following the initial success of the first three conferences at Tate Modern in 2015 and 2019 and at the National Gallery of Arts in Lithuania in 2017, Fast Forward continues to develop various public, educational and research programmes and conferences. The fourth conference will be held in partnership with Tbilisi Photography & Multimedia Museum in 2023.

The theme for the fifth conference, to be held in Thessaloniki, Greece, will focus on the hidden (hi)stories of women’s photographies seeking to reflect on current debates on gender justice.

Writing about the recognition of ‘women’ as a political subject and questioning who has the power to define what ‘women’ means, Silvia Federici urged: “We must identify the world of antagonistic politics and power relations by which our bodies are constituted and rethink the struggles that have taken place in opposition to the ‘norm’ if we are to devise strategies for change” (2020: 10). And indeed, as Françoise Vergès argued, if we are to “re-humanise the world” and fight against the ways “femonationalism” and “femoimperialism” service neoliberalism (2021:17), we need to move beyond mainstream narratives and normative histories, beyond relational notions of centres and peripheries and bring to the fore the hidden stories of anonymous women, those identifying as women and non-binary people told by and through photography.

More information about the call and submission are here.