Foam x The Hmm: Photography is…reflective

What can the past tell us about photography’s future? Join us Wednesday 11 September on The Hmm’s livestream platform for Photography is… reflective, the first of the Foam x The Hmm: Photography is… event series!

Building on photography’s inherent reflective nature, sometimes it’s worth ‘looking backward to the future’—to examine our past as a way to look ahead. In our first even we’ll take stock of the current landscape of photography by reflecting on the ways in which internet culture has shaped the medium in the past 30 years.

In 1992 the first photo was uploaded to the internet at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Since then, the increasingly dominant presence and influx of mages online has drastically changed the defining borders of the photographic medium. The entanglements between the internet and the photographic image have led us to question what is even considered a photograph and to redefine how photographic images are created, consumed, and communicated with online.

The entanglements between the internet and the photographic image have led us to question what is even considered a photograph and to redefine how photographic images are created, consumed, and communicated online. During this event, we’ll return to Foam Magazine #29: Curating the Future—an issue dedicated to envisioning the future of the medium. At that time, nearly thirteen years ago, the introduction stated that “the digitalisation of the medium brought about fundamental changes that have redetermined our entire visual culture, utterly transforming what we consider to be a photo”.

What should photography have been like today, according to the past? Which topics and questions do we return to repeatedly when thinking about the internet’s impact on photography? Which questions are still left unanswered? Together with a handful of the original contributors to the issue, we will peek back into the past to reflect on what has occurred since to speculate what might come.

📅 Date: 11 September 2024
🕗 Time: 20.00 – 21.15 CEST
📍 Location: The Hmm’s online livestream platform
🎟 Tickets: Available via foam (€5 per event, €15 for all 4 events)

Photography is…

“Photography is…” is a series of online events by Foam and The Hmm that delve into the ways in which internet culture permeates and alters the field of photography—expanding and extending it exponentially. How does our relationship with the photographic image shift and change to the internet’s cultural and technological developments? Designed for everyone curious about the medium’s evolution in the digital age and for anyone intrigued by the future of visual culture online. Join us as we examine photography’s changing face in our image-saturated world.

Upcoming events in the series

16 October 2024: Photography is… hoarding 
Navigating the endless flood of digital images

13 November 2024: Photography is… text 
Exploring text as an image-making technique

11 December 2024: Photography is… surreal 
(Re)interpreting reality in photography