Toronto Photography Seminar

The Toronto Photography Seminar is a group of scholars and curators from Ontario institutions who have been meeting regularly since 2004 to read, produce, and edit collaborative research concerning the history and theory of photography. We are basically a closed seminar, with occasional public events.  Guests who have presented public lectures, as well as workshoped pieces in the seminar, have included John Tagg, Carol Payne, John O’Brien, Laura Wexler, Shawn Michelle Smith, Clement Cheroux, Roberto Tejada, Peggy Phalen, Mark Haworth-Booth, Martin Berger, and Carol Mavor, among others.

As a group, we research themes in common and publish scholarship individually and as a group. We have collaborated on a guest issue on “circulation” for the History of Photography journal (guest editors, Thy Phu and Matthew Brower, summer 2008), and on a guest issue on “Affecting Photographies” for Photography and Culture (guest editors, Thy Phu and Linda Steer, October 2010). We produced an international conference entitled "Feeling Photography" in 2009, which later became the 2014 edited collection Feeling Photography, edited by myself and Thy Phu (Western University).

Our work has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (International Opportunities Fund; Aid to Conferences and Workshops; and most recently, Partnership Development Grant, 2011-2014) and York University (faculty development grant). Our group also workshops the papers of colleagues from other universities, who also present a second aspect of their work in a public forum.

For more information, please contact: info@torontophotographyseminar.org