Documents / Documentary / Photography: Authors Heather Diack and Sarah M. Miller in Conversation
Monday, February 7, 9 AM PST/12 Noon EST/5 PM GMT
Join us for a lively event honoring PN 2021 Book Prize Awardees Heather Diack, author of Documents of Doubt: The Photographic Conditions of Conceptual Art (UMN Press, 2020), and Sarah M. Miller, author of Documentary in Dispute: The Original Manuscript of Changing New York by Berenice Abbott and Elizabeth McCausland (RIC Books with MIT Press, 2020).
Both of these books explore the concept of “the document” and “documentary” in relation to photographic practice. Diack probes photography’s claims to truth by examining the work of 1960s conceptual photographers who actively sought to undermine these claims. Miller, in recuperating a photographic collaboration from the 1930s, guides the reader to understand how a subversive practice originating in transatlantic avant-gardism was subsequently subsumed into a category of instrumental realism.
After a brief presentation by each author of her book, Heather Diack and Sarah Miller will engage in a moderated discussion about documentary photography: its origins, development, key debates; its ongoing centrality to photographic discourse and its pitfalls as an interpretive category.
Photography Network membership is required. The event will be recorded and made available for a limited time. Please email monicabr@usc.edu to obtain a password-protected link to the recording.
