In Public / In Focus: Photography, Testimony and the Public Sphere

Photography plays an important but little understood role in the public sphere. Photographs invite viewers to identify with stories, events and others, and the ease with which photographs circulate in print and online makes them ideal for fostering discourse and debate. However, the increasing focus on testimony and witness in contemporary culture has recently altered the way that photography operates in public and raised some significant problems for photography historians regarding the representation of events, others and the past. This innovative research program will respond to these problems, and produce a new understanding of the historical, social, cultural and political links between photography and the public sphere today.