After Post-Photography 11
International Conference on Photography Studies
3-6 December 2026
School of Arts and Cultural Heritage, European University
St Petersburg, Russia
and online
PHOTOGRAPHY’S OTHER ARCHIVES
Archives in general, including photo archives, have been much in discussion in the past years. Often focusing on those held in important institutions and containing what is considered to be of historical or artistic importance however, many other archives were neglected. Yet, some of these archives can be massive as for instance those of research institutions. Others can be relatively small, such as municipal archives of a town or village. Others again were gathered by small groups or even only one person with particular interests such as collections of private photography or postcards from a certain region or period of time. Often committed to material that more conventional archives would not touch and with little funding, these archives also collect what is cheap, was mass produced, has no particular qualities or seems to have no historical importance. In other cases these other archives cover places where there simply are no archives and save material that otherwise would have been damaged or lost. In the ecosystems of knowledge, these archives thus play an essential role – they counter the bias of the well-established archives and offer a critical perspective for scholars who otherwise would have to focus only on what the institutional archives have in their depots.
At the same time, such archives are not only repositories, but also sites of care, interpretation and renewed attention. Many are shaped by initiatives of discovery, preservation, digitization, but also by practices that return, revive, re-contextualize the photographic materials within the domains of public history, art, scholarly or community use. Exhibitions, publications, online platforms, educational projects and collaborative research transform dormant holdings into living archives, opening them to new readings and audiences while also raising questions of access, authorship, context and responsibility.
For our conference we invite presentations that deal with the challenges and opportunities that these other archives often face. We would love to hear from individuals and groups, from scholars, archivists, curators, artists, restorers, collectors, students, who founded and run such archives or who for their work rely on the unique qualities these archives offer. Photographic materials are the focus, but our interest in photography is pretty wide – if you happen to work for, or with, an archive collecting Kazakh private photographs, or medical photography from a stomatological clinic in Yekaterinburg, or Soviet illustrated magazines from the 1950s, or are hosting an online archive with early digital photography – please send us your paper.
As with previous conferences, After Post-Photography 11 has two tiers.
APP comprises presentations within the conference panels. Since 2015 this conference has been building a community of specialists on photography coming from a range of backgrounds, and for this matter we invite submissions not only from academic researchers but also from curators, custodians, collectors, restorers, those who discover, save and maintain photographic archives and materials of all sorts. We welcome both research papers and innovative and non-academic formats of presentations.
APP+ addresses early career scholars, regardless of their age, but mostly pre-grad and post-grad students. Designed in a think-tank format, this panel is dedicated to detailed discussion of the participants’ work-in-progress research in order to help it develop further. APP+ topics are not limited to the archive theme – we welcome all sorts of topics within the photography studies domain.
For both tiers, please send your abstract of no more than 1800 characters or 300 words in English or Russian to app@mur.at or afterpostphotography@yandex.ru , preferably as in docx.-format, before September 20. As we will do a blind review, please do not put your name in the document, but do indicate for which tier you apply, ie APP+ or APP; and add a few lines about your background in the accompanying email. Should you have any questions concerning the process, or feel insecure whether your subject is of interest for us at all (most likely it is), please get in touch with us by email; we will also hold an online consultation on 6 September, 19.00 MSK/16.00 UTC – if you are interested to attend do email us to request a link (it will be also posted on our social media). The selected participants will be notified by September 30.
The working languages of the conference will be Russian and English. If your paper is selected, there is a deadline for handing in the text of your paper and your presentation (November 20 for APP, November 10 for APP+), in order to facilitate interpreting. The conference itself will be held in person. There is no participation fee.
APP organizing committee: Ramina Abilova, Maria Gourieva, Ekaterina Iushkevich, Daria Panaiotti, Friedrich Tietjen, Erika Wolf
APP+ organizers: Olga Davidenko, Daria Glebova, Yulia Ivanenko, Pavel Sharkov