C.1 Canons, Counter-narratives, and Encounters: Teaching Histories and Theories of Photography
Thu Oct 27 / 13:30 – 15:00 / East Common Room, rm 1034, Hart House
chairs /
- Georgia Phillips-Amos, Concordia University
- Stéphanie Hornstein, Concordia University
This session proposes a conversation on shifting pedagogical practices in the field of photographic history and theory. At a time when “critical race theory” is being banned across schools and universities in the Southern United States, effectively making it illegal to address systemic racism, it is imperative to foster a photographic literacy that is intersectional and inclusive. We invite contributions that consider how to teach photography in ways that counter a history that is inherently colonial, racialized, and extractivist. How can canons and counter-narratives coexist within the classroom? How can we provide students with a clear sense of historical progressions within the medium while countering myths of linear progress? How, in other words, can we teach Edward Curtis through the lens of Jeff Thomas, or cartes-de-visite through portraits of Sojourner Truth? We are interested in pedagogical reflections, curatorial case-studies, and artistic practices that reimagine the ways photographic history might be presented and written today.
keywords: photography, pedagogy, counternarratives, decolonial, intersectional
C.1.1 Photography in Canada: The First 150 Years as a Pedagogical Resource
- Sarah Bassnett, Western University
- Sarah Parsons, York University
In this paper, we discuss our co-authored, open-source book Photography in Canada: The First 150 Years, 1839-1989, forthcoming from Art Canada Institute in 2023. We start with a brief overview and our goals for the project, which included highlighting the contributions of photographers from historically marginalized groups, including women, Black, Indigenous, and Asian photographers. Then we outline various ways readers can engage with the book and offer suggestions for using the book as a teaching resource, both to learn about well-known photographers but also to explore under-recognized practitioners and counter-narratives. We discuss how different sections of the book analyze the institutions, technology, genres, and other factors that have shaped the way we see, value, and understand photography. Overall, our paper considers how the book can support shifting pedagogical practices around teaching the history of photography in Canada.
keywords: photography, Canada, web publishing, pedagogy
Sarah Bassnett is Professor in the Department of Visual Arts at Western University. Her research focuses on the history of photography and photo-based contemporary art, especially as they relate to issues of power and resistance and moments of social change. She is the author of Picturing Toronto: Photography and the Making of a Modern City (McGill - Queen’s University Press, 2016). Her current SSHRC-funded research investigates how stories of forced migration are told through photography.
Sarah Parsons is Associate Professor in the Department of Visual Art and Art History at York University. Her publications include William Notman: Life and Work (ACI, 2014) and “Site of Ongoing Struggle: Race and Gender in Studies of Photography,” Handbook of Photography Studies (Routledge, 2020). She edited the volume Emergence: Contemporary Canadian Photography (Gallery 44 and TMU, 2009). Her current SSHRC-funded research is Feeling Exposed: Photography, Privacy, and Visibility in Nineteenth Century North America.
C.1.2 Material Histories and Collaborative Possibilities in the Classroom
Siobhan Angus, Carleton University
Taking a recently co-taught course, “Material Histories of Photography,” as a case study, I explore the potentials and challenges of teaching photography through a material lens. Taught as a collections-based class, the course explored the history of photography from the early nineteenth century to the present to consider how these technologies and material forms intersect with constructions of class, race, gender, and the non-human world; the ongoing processes of settler-colonialism; and both modern environmental conservation and ecological crisis. I will also reflect more broadly on building a collaborative environment in the classroom. I conclude that a pedagogical approach to photographic history and theory built around material histories is an effective method of decentering canonical and teleological histories of photography.
keywords: pedagogy, collaboration, material histories
Siobhan Angus is an art historian, curator, and organizer. Specializing in the history of photography and the environmental humanities, her current research explores the visual culture of resource extraction with a focus on materiality, labor, and environmental justice. She is an assistant professor of Media Studies at Carleton University and holds a Ph.D. in Art History and Visual Culture from York University where her dissertation was awarded the Governor General’s Gold Medal. Her research has been published in Panorama: Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, Radical History Review, Capitalism and the Camera (Verso, 2021) and October. Her book, Camera Geologica, is forthcoming with Duke University Press. At the heart of her research program lies an intellectual and political commitment to environmental, economic, and social justice.
C.1.3 Teaching Photography in a Settler Colonial Context
Reilley Bishop-Stall, Concordia University
For the past two years, I have been teaching an undergraduate course in the Department of Art History at Concordia University entitled: Indigenous and Settler Photography in Canada. Covering case studies from confederation to the current moment, the course is designed to demonstrate photography’s integral role in the formation, development and maintenance of settler colonial Canada (and, to some extent, the United States), with the camera functioning equally as a weapon of dispossession, misrepresentation, and control, and as a tool of empowerment, exposure and self-determination for Indigenous artists and activists. Throughout the course, well-known and iconic images are interwoven with less familiar photographs, and emphasis is shared between settler, Indigenous and racialized photographers. While traditional approaches to the history of photography have accounted for the popularity of Indigenous people as subjects for early European and settler photographers, this course demonstrates that Indigenous people have equally as long a history behind the camera. Indeed, as producers, participants and antagonists, there is a rich tradition of Indigenous artists and agents confronting and questioning the hegemony of settler photography in challenging, revelatory and anticolonial ways. As a historian, writer and educator, I am committed to prioritizing these practices and perspectives when approaching histories and theories of photography and, particularly, when introducing students to the field. Despite the title of the course, content is not limited to Indigenous and settler photographers, but encompasses discussions of photography’s role in defining and policing citizenship, immigration and belonging in fundamentally racist and gendered ways. In all cases, I remind students that photography is a quintessentially colonial medium and encourage them to critically analyze all photographic images within this context. If given the opportunity to participate in this productive and timely panel, I would offer a number of pedagogical reflections from teaching this course, including both encouragements and obstacles.
keywords: photography, Indigenous, settler colonialism, Canada, critical race studies
Dr. Reilley Bishop-Stall is a settler Canadian art historian whose research is centered on Indigenous and settler representational histories, contemporary art and visual culture with a specific focus lens-based media, archival ethics, anticolonial and activist art. Reilley received her PhD from McGill University and was awarded the university’s Arts Insights Dissertation Award for the year’s most outstanding dissertation in the Humanities. Her work as been published in a number of books and peer-reviewed journals including Photography & Culture, Art Journal Open, and The Journal of Art Theory and Practice. She has held a Horizon Postdoctoral fellowship with the Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership: The Pilimmaksarniq/Pijariuqsarniq Project, and is currently Scholar-in-Residence in the Department of Art History at Concordia University.
