Sophia is currently accepting the submission of articles for consideration, following the external Peer Review process
as per described on the Editorial Policies section. All articles submitted should address the topic for the upcoming issue
and be written in accord to the Author Guidelines.
Issue #6: "Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations"
Call deadline: February 28, 2021
Expected publication date: December 2021
Expected International Conference: May 2021
In the upcoming 6th number of Sophia, which will be called Visual Spaces Of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations, we are interested in original articles that may address the following issues: How do we all become aware of the gradual, but inescapable changes in the environment? How does photography raise public awareness of the pressing environmental changes implicit in our anthropocentric epoch? How can photography contribute to these complex debates? These issues can be addressed from several perspectives: from confronting our memories and understandings of a place to reactivating ‘what is no longer there’ or proposing ‘what could be there’.
This volume of Sophia will bring together photographers and researchers who make significant contributions to these discussions, including the material processes of creating, managing and interpreting sets of documents. We are interested in material processes where photography is explored as a significant research tool for critical and innovative views on architecture and urban transformation in their expanded fields and contextualized by larger systems: cultural, political, artistic, technical, and historical dimensions. We will be publishing long-term photographic work of environmental changes, innovative documentation or archival projects exploring discursive forms of presentation and visual constructs, articles and research papers discussing the rich spectrum of techniques and visual strategies employed in environmental discussions. The spectrum of transformational processes is broad: deforestation, soil erosion, suburban sprawl, wastelands, decaying shopping malls, neglected social housing, post-industrial ruins, gentrification and privatization of public space, or demonstration movements from “Occupy” to “Fridays for Future”. In this context, we will be especially interested in proposals that are able to question how the different dimensions of architecture and urban transformation may be meaningfully understood or reframed through the different lenses and perspectives of visual processes.The journal is now accepting photographic work and critical papers within the above framework that will allow the interested public to reflect on the diverse transformational processes affecting our present cities and territories.
Editorial Team
Carolina Leite (CEAU / FAUP)
Carlos Machado e Moura (CEAU / FAUP)
Jorge Marum (CIAUD-UBI)
Leonor Matos Silva (Dinâmia’CET, ISCTE-IUL)
Maria Neto (CEAU / FAUP - UBI)
Pedro Leão Neto (CEAU / FAUP)
Wilfried Wang (UTSoA)
International Conference for this 6th number of Sophia Journal: Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations
The International Conference for this 6th number of Sophia Journal, will take place in the Faculty of Architecture of University of Porto (FAUP), enduring the cycle of international forums held annually around the theme and topics on focus in Sophia for each year.
Sophia Journal´s International Conference will present a live and videoconference program organized by CEAU / FAUP in partnership with other institutions and the event will be broadcasted live online, encompassing a rich and diverse program around: (i) a series of videoconferences; (ii) the launch and presentation of the 6th number of the Peer Review journal Sophia: Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations; (iii) roundtables for each panel concerning a focused topic coming from Sophia´s comprehensive call; (iv) presentation of articles submitted; (v) the opening of Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations exhibition, developed for this conference and for the spaces of FAUP, where diverse visual essays will be displayed in which photography is explored as a significant research instrument for building critical and innovative views on architecture as an extended field of knowledge that operates within larger systems, with cultural, artistic, technical, and historical dimensions.
The objective of these international forums is to promote the reflection and debate on the universes of Architecture, Art and Image, addressing various issues transversal to the worlds of Photography and Architecture, exploring how the image can be a means to cross borders and shift boundaries between different disciplinary areas.
We are now accepting photographic work and critical papers within the above framework that will allow the interested public to reflect on the diverse transformational processes affecting our present cities and territories.
See further instructions bellow:
Issues & Panels
The whole conference will be made accessible in real time through live-streaming / online and there will be specific presentations from authors encompassing a series of video-conferences and the round-tables of panels.
The global theme of the conference is Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformations and its round-tables / panel will cover the following topics:
An instant world: truth and reality
Images of a perfect world are everywhere. On Instagram, in publicity, in videogames. They are the images of the truth; the subjective, abstract, imagined and non-physical existence. How, then, may we capture reality while collecting images? Is it without altering the raw material? In any case, our eyes work like lenses, and our mind is faithful (or true) to our eyes. Again: how can we photograph the facts, the objective reality? I would like to know how photographers respond or have responded, in the past, to this challenge, bearing in mind that this gesture is not to dethrone aesthetics, artistic impulsiveness or outer creativity, but the other way around: in recording a domain that is what it is, Man is encountering a real instant world.
Photographing the altered identity of landscapes
There is a challenge when using photography as both an inquiry tool and artistic form of expression for representing landscapes, which entails uncovering their physical, cultural, social and political marks as well as their identity, their perceived uniqueness as places. Landscapes are territories transformed by human action and, as such, they reveal the understanding and values of past and present societies and how we are transforming the environment. According to Lefebvre (La production de l’espace, 1974), one of the ways of conditioning social reproduction occurs through the economic and political restriction of a group accessing space, thus it is vital to call our attention to how landscapes are being significantly transformed, conditioned and controlled. How can we understand landscapes and their identity in the contemporary transformation processes resulting from the dynamics of change and disrupting habits of our societies?
Photographic narratives of urban transformations
Time, space, scale and movement are essential aspects of visual data production. Significant changes in cities’ flows can transpire in just a few minutes, hours or days, span several years or even decades. A diachronic study of an urban environment could concentrate on the repetitive patterns of many activities and phenomena that occur during a day or focus on transformations over much more extensive periods of time. Several photographic methods explicitly focus on sequentially researching social change and cultural expressions as they develop, over time in a particular space. Yet, art-based communication approaches express insights in more experimental ways, from ‘visual essays’ to digital storytelling, photo-novels, sometimes using pre-existing images, and even non-photographic ones. Boosted by new media technologies and networking opportunities, they are powerful contemporary vehicles for voicing and visualizing our reflections, ideas, arguments, experiences, and observations upon change, from manifestos to critical reviews, or just compelling stories.
Digital spectacle and its impact on architecture and the architectural image
As some argue that architecture is too slow for the digital revolution1, the resurrection of the collage, appeared as a viable strategy to critically reclaim architecture's place: one that, unlike simulations of binary realities, was to be a raw and ambiguous like an ‘open project’, even if computer simulated. Due to its success, the collage has been taken over by the market for its ‘arresting novelty’. As a commodity, it compensates for architecture's slow pace: faster to produce and consume, less related to the disciplinary process of the conception, more evocative and less ideological. To some, the ‘collage era’ represents the return of a richer, stronger profession2 while some claim they are blank postcards of a post-idealistic age, one where built quality rarely holds up. At a time when the true cost of globalization, consumption and constant growth is under discussion, should architecture embrace speed or is there the need for a counter-model?
Read more about the issues covered in the Author Guidelines.
Submit all paper proposals to: info@cityscopio.com
All queries should be forwarded directly to: info@cityscopio.com
Download the information related to this event here.
Title
Open Call | Visual Spaces of Change: photographic documentation of environmental transformationsType
ConferenceOrganizers
From
January 01, 2021 01:33 PMUntil
February 28, 2021 11:30 PMVenue
Porto, PortugalAddress