We Do/Are Photography

In preparation for the Photoszene Festival in May 2023, the Internationale Photoszene Köln organized a 3-day event program of impulses and dialogues at Kunsthafen and a symposium at Stadtarchiv Köln on October 20-22, 2022.

In the sense of an open ThinkTank, scientists, curators and artists are invited to reflect on current discursive fields of photography in joint dialogues in four thematic blocks. The program is aimed at a general audience interested in photography and art, as well as at students and professionals, in order to discuss with us and the invited speakers the role of photography in the urgent debate on climate change, the discourses on body politics, but also the ever-changing medium of photography itself and its significance in the archives. Each day will culminate in an open get-together with drinks, music, and projections, for which the Kunsthafen will be transformed into a temporary photography venue.

The title We Do/Are Photography stands metaphorically for the network of relationships that interweaves the medium of photography, the world, and us, and addresses the fact that the relationship of humans to the environment is increasingly mediated through photographic images. We are part of the images we produce (We Do Photography), but also of the images that surround us and shape our relationship to the environment (We Are Photography).

We Do/Are Photography was sponsored by the Ministry of Culture and Science of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia. The symposium took place in cooperation with Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie and Rheinisches Bildarchiv and is additionally supported by Kunststiftung NRW. The Internationale Photoszene Köln is institutionally supported by the City of Cologne. The Netherlands Embassy sponsored the contribution of John Fleetwood and Lotte Sprengers from the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague as part of the panel "The Medium and Us: Photography in Progress" on October 20, 2022 and also the exhibition of the student collective "The Fool Collective".
 

Concept We Do/Are Photography: Dana Bergmann & Heide Häusler 
Concept Symposium: Heidi Pfohl in cooperation with Lucia Halder & Miriam Zlobinski