Images of freedom, images of freeing. : Photography as evidence and social injustice.

International audienceSince the late nineteenth century, with Jacob Rijs and Lewis Hine as many others from all over the world, photography has been a medium for denouncing injustice, claiming for better life means and helping revolutionary causes. As a natural consequence of its documental nature it became the privileged medium for contemporary art that aim to challenge political and social establishment.This conference will explore photographic creation as a social and leftist weapon and its publics all along the twentieth and twentieth-first century. It aims to examine the relationship between documentary photography, human causes and social ideals, class and political commitment, social and economical criticism. It will consider photographic practices and their production of both publics and politics, thinking specifically about the relationship between Leftist practices and the mainstream, but also on the relationship between contemporary art and social criticism, as well as art and propaganda. It will be accompanied by a film projection program at the Museum of Chiado – Museum of Contemporary Art in Lisbon, the site where the conference will take place on 16 and 17 June 2016