8th International Conference of Photography and Theory (ICPT 2026)

The 8th International Conference of Photography and Theory (ICPT 2026) is dedicated to the medium of photography and the impact of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, 360 photography, augmented reality, machine-made images, drones, satellites, etc on photographic practices.

Key Topics

• Material culture and practices of mourning and remembering
  • Contemporary photography and funerals
  • Photographic practices and mourning
  • Rituals, spirituality and practices of memorialization
  • Postmortem photography
  • Remains and the archaeology of dying
  • Vernacular mourning and collective embodied practices
  • Bereavement photography
  • Still life photography / memento mori
  • Digital legacies
• Photographic Alternative deathscapes
  • Environmental trauma and ecological destruction
  • Forensic images of accidents, crimes, and/or suicides
  • Informal deathscapes through texts and images
  • Aerial photographs of destruction
  • Festivals, celebrations, and social gatherings as alternative ways of remembering
  • Personal / informal counter archives of grief
  • Photography of absence
  • Death cafes and the death positivity movement
  • Computer vision, AI and necropolitics
• Memorial Landscapes and Photography
  • Heroes, shrines and monuments
  • Public parks, gardens, and cemeteries
  • Persistence of images in memorial landscapes
  • Counter-monuments and identities
  • Participatory memory practices in museums
  • Ungrievability and exclusions in formal deathscapes
  • Absences, silencing, invisible traces
  • Funeral parlors and rituals
• Mediated deathscapes
  • Commercialization and mass media circulation of death
  • Social media and grief, selfies
  • Fake news, fake death, deep fakes
  • Mediated sensations and visibility of death in media
  • Images of war, resistance and protesting
  • Celebrity deaths, assassinations and suicides
  • Blogs, podcast, and contemporary memento mori

Who should Attend

Academics and photographers.