Subject matter held in the existing resource suggest topics of interest include:
Geo-politics of space and place.
The way that photography can be used not only to record space and place but can be used as a tool for empowerment. How photographs are framed and can change viewpoint will influence how we read photographs and the understanding of how we use and imagine space publically, privately and politically. This theme includes the project - Lens of empowerment
Archive
The way that the archive is created, but also how it is changing to respond to the modern world. The new digital archives being built online by the general public and how these will change the traditional institutional archives. This area is concerned to consider how information is collated, what hierarchies are involved, how personal archives are constructed and how documentation incorporates facts and fiction. This theme includes the projects (De)constructing the archive and the proposed Making Light Work for the Future project.
Identity
How we have used photography to construct our identity and how artists today are challenging these old practices and making new and innovative work exploring this. This area includes the use of photographs to construct narrative fictions, visualize fantasy and to define identity and photography that is used to provoke memory in phototherapy, for example the Telling Tales project
The Photographic Object
How photographs are used as objects (in albums and as personal touchstones) throughout time and in different cultures. This theme includes consideration of the photograph and its relationship to defining history. It is concerned with interaction with the photograph and how emerging digital technology and the development of photographic commons impacts on this – what will happen to the photographic collection (both personal and institutional) as a result.
