Redeye presents the first in an occasional series of alternative histories of photography, aimed at introducing you to aspects of photographic history that aren’t too well-known. We are delighted to bring you a talk from Dr. Kelley Wilder of De Montfort University on photography’s uses in documenting the world.
This lecture, based on a forthcoming co-edited book by Gregg Mitman and Kelley Wilder, will introduce the audience to the many impulses that have led humans to document “the world and all that is in it,” scooping up swathes of landscape, registering thousands of identities, recording innumerable stars. From the Tichborne Trial to the Mars Rover Mission, the lecture touches on many of the most important moments of creating, collecting, storing and recreating these documents that now make up our history and collective memory.
[img_assist|nid=15370|title=Kelley Wilder|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=219|height=330]Dr Wilder writes: “Imagine the twentieth century without photography and film. Its history would be absent of images that defined historical moments and generations: the Battle of the Somme, the death camps of Auschwitz, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the Apollo lunar landing. There would be no photos of migrant farm workers during the Great Depression, no family album of suitably posed great aunts. It would be a history constituted from, dare we say it, just artist renderings and the written and spoken word. To inhabitants of the twenty-first century, deeply immersed in visual culture, such a history feels insubstantial, imprecise and perhaps even unscientific”.
About Dr. Kelley Wilder
Dr Kelley Wilder is a photographic historian, with interests in the cultures of science and knowledge generated by photography and photographic practice. In her work Dr Wilder frequently considers the photographic practices of Nineteenth century scientists and artists like William Henry Fox Talbot, Sir John Herschel, Henri Becquerel and others. Additionally, she considers the material and cultural histories of science and photography where they intersect at points in the Nineteenth and Twentieth centuries in research, image making and industry.
Tickets and Pricing
Tickets for this lecture are priced as follows:
Redeye Member: £2
Student/Unwaged: £4
Standard: £6
To buy a Redeye member ticket, please first log in to this website as a paid Redeye member. To book a ticket, please click the Book Ticket button below. Advance ticket sales close at 15:00 on Thursday 5 June 2014. Please check our terms and conditions before booking.
Venue and Timing
The lecture will take place at the Portico Library, 57 Mosley Street, Manchester, M2 3HY from 18:00 to 19:30 on 5 June 2014. Please be aware that the Portico Library is currently not wheelchair accessible.
Doors will open at 18:00 with the talk starting at 18:15.