Appel à communication : « Photography and the Histories of Sculpture : What role has photography played in forming sculpture’s place in art history ? »

This session asks : what role has photography played in forming sculpture’s place in art history ? Working across disciplines and histories of sculpture, exhibition making, museum studies and photography, this session discusses the formation of art historical narratives, seeking to unpack past narratives and ask questions of how future narratives might be constructed. Addressing the role photographs and their producers have played in articulating sculptures’ meanings and histories, this session invites papers that take stock of the impact of photography on the histories of sculpture and its shaping of understandings of ‘sculpture’ by: communicating exhibitions, collections and works; distributing, interpreting and fictionalising sculpture ; developing art historical analyses and positions; enabling research of sculpture.

This session is also interested in analysing the photography of sculpture as a subject of exhibitions and publications, as seen, for example, in the exhibitions Close Encounters : The Sculptor’s Studio in the Age of the Camera (Henry Moore Institute, 2000) and The Original Copy (MOMA, 2010). Likewise, the artistic treatments of sculpture through photography are pertinent to the relationship between sculpture and photography; these changing relations have ramifications for our developing art historical grasp of sculpture, as it becomes analysed as much through its representation as through its direct encounter. This session strives to be trans-historical, inviting papers from academics, artists, curators and writers addressing early photography as much as recent experiments.

We invite proposals for 25 minute conference papers. Please submit a 250 word abstract and short CV to Kirstie Gregory (Research Programme Assistant) kirstie@henry-moore.org

Deadline for submissions is Monday 12 November 2012.
For more details visit our Research pages on www.henry-moore.org/hmi

Photography and the Histories of Sculpture : What role has photography played in forming sculpture’s place in art history ?
39th Annual AAH conference and bookfair
University of Reading, 11 – 13 April 2013
Conveners: Henry Moore Institute (Lisa Le Feuvre and Jon Wood)