Performance and Photography: Theatre of Photography

The Theatre of Photography research group convened by Wiebke Leister explores staging practices that engage both the camera and its visual histories into modes of theatre production, thus stressing how photography is performative, as such, when giving and enhancing the condition of the resulting images, i.e. scenarios that only exist for the camera. Including who is staged in those frames – the fame of the proscenium arch, the view finder of the camera and the border of the photographic image – and who or what might exist beyond it, off-frame, as if it had never been staged. In particular the relationship between model and photographer, which meanders between recording, reacting to cues, acting out and re-enacting, and how these translate to audiences. Invaded participants include a range of practitioners, theorists and historians approaching the subject from different photography, theatre and performance angles. The first meeting was held on 15th May 2015, 2:00- 6:00pm at the Swedenborg Society as part of the Moose on the Loose Research festival. Successive events on 12th February 2016 and 8th July 2016 to further discuss the intersection of photography and theatre, to take their multiple encounters as an opportunity to consider and rethink the often overused or misconceived concepts of ‘performance’