Description

We are inundated daily with both beautiful and terrible documentary photography that shows us human life in all its horror and beauty. Such photographs have aesthetic qualities that can touch us in very different ways. They can touch us by beauty or lack thereof, they can make us sink into a contemplation on shapes, colours and contrasts, they can make us question the conditions of a good and right life. A picture cannot itself determine how it is perceived. Rather, that is determined by the viewer's sensibilities and the way it is addressed by the content but also the presentation of a photograph, for instance in a newspaper, in a museum, as part of a series in a book, etc. Precisely therein, in the relative independence of the observer of photography and its environment from the medium, lies both the power and impotence of the me-dium. Photographs do not dictate what we see. At best, they invite us to look appropriately.

Featured are the aesthetic thinking of Martin Seel and Susan Sontag, among others, and the photography of Sebastiao Salgado, Diane Arbus, Chris Killip, Joel Sternfeld, Susan Meiselas.

Speaker(s)

Prof Dr H.H.A. van den Brink, Professor of Political and Social Philosophy at Utrecht University

Location

Parkhotel

Molenstraat 53 in The Hague

Organiser

Philosophy & Technology

Society for Philosophy

Name and contact details for information

Further information from Henk Uijttenhout, using the e-mail address below

hbmuijttenhout@hotmail.com

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Registration in advance is not necessary.