Foam x The Hmm:
Photography is...
Foam joins forces with digital culture platform The Hmm for a series of online talks. In Photography is..., we investigate how internet culture permeates and alters different layers of photography—extending the photographic field exponentially. How does our relationship with the photographic image shift and change to the internet's cultural and technological developments?
This online event series is designed for everyone curious about the photographic medium's evolution in the digital age. Are you intrigued by the future of visual culture online? Join us as we examine photography's changing face in our image-saturated world.
16 October 2024: Photography is... hoarding
Navigating the endless flood of digital images
In 2024, an estimated 1.94 trillion photos will be taken worldwide, with 5.3 billion photos captured daily, or 61,400 per second. With approximately 14.3 trillion photos in existence, and 14 billion images shared daily on social media, it seems like we have a hoarding problem. We often forget that behind the immaterial metaphors of ‘the cloud’ are real, physical technologies. The storage of these vast amounts of data requires extensive energy and infrastructure, contributing to carbon emissions while we mindlessly save every moment from our phones to the cloud.
Yet, this abundance of digital imagery also serves a vital social purpose. Photographs have become powerful tools for social justice, serving as a witness of human rights abuses and environmental crises. Activists and citizen journalists wield their cameras to document injustices and share vital information online, often putting their safety on the line in the process. The act of saving and sharing these images, in the face of censorship or erasures, amplifies voices and preserves important narratives that might otherwise be silenced.
This duality raises pressing questions: What is the value of a single photograph in a flood of digital images? How do we balance the need to document significant events with the environmental impact of our digital habits? How will we store and preserve these large quantities of visual data?
Speakers
Anouk Kruithof: Anouk Kruithof is a visual artist with a trans-disciplinary approach which encompasses sculpture, photography, collage, video, books, websites and (social) interventions in the public domain. The scope of her world view extends from environmental pollution and the consequences of climate change to government surveillance practices, privacy to inequality and protest.
Oscar Talbot: Oscar Talbot is an academic working on abolition and ecology, and has been helping the Netherlands Student Intifada Archive project. This archive preserves the student uprising, documents police violence, shapes the narrative, and learns for future protests.
Razan AlSalah: Razan AlSalah is a Palestinian artist and teacher based in Tio’tia:ke/Montreal, Canada.
11 September 2024: Photography is... reflective
What can the past tell us about photography's future?
Building on photography’s inherent reflective nature, sometimes it's worth 'looking backward to the future'—to examine our past as a way to look ahead. In the first event of the Photography is… series, we will take stock of the current landscape of photography by reflecting on the ways in which internet culture has shaped photography in the past 30 years.
The entanglements between the internet and the photographic image have led us to question what is even considered a photograph and to redefine how photographic images are created, consumed, and communicated online. During this event, we'll return to Foam Magazine #29: Curating the Future—an issue dedicated to envisioning the future of the medium. At that time, nearly thirteen years ago, the introduction stated that “the digitalisation of the medium brought about fundamental changes that have redetermined our entire visual culture, utterly transforming what we consider to be a photo".
What should photography have been like today, according to the past? Which topics and questions do we return to repeatedly when thinking about the internet's impact on photography? Which questions are still left unanswered? Together with a handful of the original contributors to the issue, we will peek back into the past to reflect on what has occurred since to speculate what might come.
Speakers
Fred Ritchin: Dean Emeritus of the International Center of Photography School. Author of four books on photography. His newest book, The Synthetic Eye, is forthcoming in 2024.
Constant Dullaart: Artist, director Distant.Gallery and professor Networked Materialities at ADBK-Nürnberg.
Marisa Olson: Artist, writer and curator.
Full programme
11 September 2024: Photography is... reflective
What can the past tell us about photography's future?
Speakers: Fred Ritchin, Constant Dullaart and Marisa Olson.
16 October 2024: Photography is... hoarding
Navigating the endless flood of digital images
Speakers: Anouk Kruithof, Oscar Talbot, Razan AlSalah.
More information coming soon:
13 November 2024: Photography is... text
Exploring text as an image-making technique
11 December 2024: Photography is... surreal
(Re)interpreting reality in photography
explore connections
Foam x The Hmm:
Photography is...