The 3rd Essen Symposium for Photography will be hosted by the Essen Center for Photography and will take place from February 4th to 6th, 2026.
Raising the question “What Will Photography Be?”, the Symposium for Photography aims at newly addressing interest in the medium’s prospective forms and uses. We invite speculations that critically engage with recent developments in the open and much-diversified field of visual media and try to position photography’s future role within such a realm.
How will photographic media participate in the dynamics of current technological advancements? Furthermore, how can photography impact and promote such developments with respect to social, artistic, scientific, and everyday practices? We are interested in ideas about photography’s future roles in social, artistic, scientific, and everyday realms.
At the same time, we must return to the basic assumption driving such interests: What will we mean when we say “photography”? Will we discuss specific techniques, aesthetics, or practices bound to visual images? Keeping the lessons taught by “operational images” in mind, will we leave the idea of the visual behind us? In short, what will be our point of reference when we address something as “photography”?
We invite critical speculations on three areas of interest: 1. Technologies and Aesthetics, 2. Theories and Methods, and 3. Politics and Agencies.
Contributions
We welcome proposals from an interdisciplinary field of research. Presentations should not exceed 20 minutes. Please email your abstract and a brief CV in one PDF by July 31, 2025, at the latest, to: [email protected]. For the complete call, please click here.
