Northwestern University in Evanston, IL is to host the conference ‘Blogging Images: Photojournalism and Public Commentary’ on Saturday, April 30th.

Robert Hariman explains why here:

“Because photojournalism is a public art, it exists in part to provoke and inform public discussion.  Likewise, good public discussion includes talking about images as a way of thinking about public affairs and other things held in common.  Although photojournalism has been accompanied by commentary from its inception, digital technologies have provided both new media for image circulation and new venues for critical commentary and audience interaction.  These changes provide an opportunity for scholars in the humanities to become more directly engaged with public audiences, but effective engagement is likely to require different skills and perhaps different attitudes than those that characterize academic discourse.”

Speakers include Brian Ulrich, (Document to Propaganda: The New Face of Photographic Truth), Jim Johnson (The Uses of Photography: Thinking About Public Space) and Michael Shaw of BagNewsNotes (Role and Process of Analyzing News Images). Looking forward to the conclusions.