The Decolonising Lens Part 2

In this second installment of the webinar-series ‘The Decolonising Lens’, hosted by the London College of Communication, Mark Sealy will be in conversation with Chris Boot and Deborah Willis to discuss how dialogue, personal relationships and a network of like-minded individuals are important in effecting change within academic and cultural institutions.

Whilst maintaining the importance of top-down policy in overturning bigotry and discrimination within in our institutions, the process of Decolonising can be conceived of as a horizontal rather than vertical alignment.

The Decolonial as a methodology of thought and action finds its force in the dialogues between ‘critical friends’, in the pressures and counter pressures of discussion within a network that seeks to challenge Eurocentric, phallocentric and heterocentric hegemony.

This event is organised by Photography and the Archive Research Centre at London College of Communication and hosted by its Director Brigitte Lardinois.

Please see here for more information and to register.

Mark Sealy is interested in the relationship between photography and social change, identity politics, race, and human rights. He has been Founder and Executive Director of photographic arts charity Autograph ABP since 1991. As such he has produced numerous publications, curated exhibitions, and commissioned photographers and filmmakers worldwide. Sealy has guest lectured and devised study programmes for arts and academic institutions around the world. In 2019 he was awarded the Outstanding Service to Photography Award by The Royal Photographic Society. In 2020 he joined the University of Arts London in the role of Principal Research Fellow Decolonising Photography and is a core member of PARC. His latest publication The Decolonising Camera (with accompanying exhibition at Houston Photofest) is hailed as a seminal work.

Professor Deborah Willis is an acclaimed photographer, artist, author and curator whose art and pioneering research has focused on cultural histories envisioning the black body, women and gender. She is the author of Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present amongst many other titles. She has lectured extensively on the history of photography, holds the Chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU and is director of the NYU Institute for African American Affairs and the Centre for Black Visual Culture. She is both a MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellow. In addition to these positions she has served as a consultant to museums, archives, and educational centres.

Chris Boot became executive director of Aperture Foundation in 2011. Previously he was director of London’s Photo Co-op (since renamed Photofusion), an independent photography education centre; Bureau Chief of Magnum Photos, both in London and in New York; and editorial director at Phaidon Press. His company Chris Boot Ltd., launched in 2001, published amongst others the award-winning photobooks Lodz Ghetto Album (2004) and Things as They Are: Photojournalism in Context Since 1955 (2005). He is the author and editor of many books, notably Magnum Stories (Phaidon, 2004)

Brigitte Lardinois is currently the Director of the Photography and the Archive Research Centre (PARC). She is a curator, writer and lecturer, specialising in photography and curation. Her current research focus is the Edward Reeves Archive in Lewes, established in 1855 and believed to be the oldest still operating photographic Studio in the world. Lardinois has curated numerous photography exhibitions both in her capacity as Photographic Curator at the Barbican Art Gallery and as the head of the Cultural Department at Magnum Photos. These include group exhibitions such as Magnum Ireland, as well as solo shows for Henri Cartier-Bresson and many others. Her published work includes editing Eve Arnold’s ‘People’ and Magnum Magnum.