The Theatre of Photography

This research network brings together researchers to revisit hybrid definitions of performativity, including ongoing conversations on performativity, the photographic/theatric, the apparatus, re-enactment, staging, liveness and the event of the photographic image.

Convened by Wiebke Leister, a first symposium at the Swedenborg Society (2015) was followed by termly meetings at the Photography and the Archive Research Centre and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and a study session at the Zabludowicz Collection (2017).

Following a joint conference presentation at the International Society for Intermedial Studies in Montreal (2017), Joel Anderson and Wiebke Leister edited a special issue of the academic journal Photography and Culture (2018) with 9 co-written, cross-disciplinary co-authored dialogues that tease out the connections between performative photography and photographic performance.