Art & Philosophy Forum at the DJCAD: Ontology of Photography

View from the Window at Le Gras. Heliographic image by Nicéphore Niépce, 1826

I will be presenting a paper at the Art & Philosophy Forum in DJCAD lecture theatre 5017 at 16:00 on 14 March. As always, these seminars are open to all interested students from across Philosophy as well as Contemporary Art Practice.

The paper is titled "Ontology of Photography and the Crisis of Representation: In Search of the Real". We will look into how our understanding of the 'photographic real' changed throughout history and discuss the challenges and possibilities that the notion of reality presents us with in photography. This interdisciplinary presentation will address the following questions:

• What is real in photography?
• Is realness something that needs to be explained?
• Should we strive for the kind of explanation that refuses to reduce reality to manipulable ingredients?
• What is 'crisis of representation' in photography and how can philosophy address it?
• Can information be a sufficient ground for the new ontology of photography that contemporary philosophy poses?
• What role does manipulation play in our understanding of realness?