Childhood Publics and the Child’s Gaze is a three-part seminar series dedicated to thinking about the various aspects of children’s photography. In each of the three seminars, different speakers address the archival, aesthetic, ethical, legal, and technical challenges and opportunities that children’s photography creates in research and practice.
The third and last seminar, ‘ethics and infrastructures for the child’s gaze’, features Scarlett Evans, Journalist and Manager for Contemporary Art, The Girl Museum, Gayatri Nair, Chennai Photo Biennale, Chennai, India, Annebella Pollen, Professor of Visual and Material Culture, University of Brighton, and Christos Varvantakis, Wikimedia Germany, and co-Director the Children’s Photography Archive. Building on the themes of the previous two seminars, the speakers engage with the role of archival infrastructure and the ethics of care in constructing the child photographer. Their discussion stages the possibilities that archives and museums might play in a future that takes the child photographer seriously. The third seminar was chaired by Elina Moraitopoulou.
To connect with the Children’s Photography Archive on social media, the CPA is on Instagram and Twitter @ChildPhotoArch
You can also listen to the seminar recording on SoundCloud.
The speakers referred to several works during the session, including:
Scarlett Evans:
– CUSP: at the edge of girlhood
– DISplaced
– Female Gaze
Gayatri Nair:
– Chennai Photo Biennale – A Land of Stories photo exhibition.
Annebella Pollen:
– Mass Photography: Collective Histories of Everyday Life, book by Annebella Pollen (2015)
– The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift: Intellectual Barbarians, book by Annebella Pollen (2021)
– Nudism in a Cold Climate ; The Visual Culture of Naturists in Mid-20th Century Britain, book by Annebella Pollen
– More Than A Snapshot: A Visual History of Photo Wallets, book by Annebella Pollen (2023)
– Make your Hobby Photography (Purnell Books, 1975), pp. 4-5.
– Good Pictures: A History of Popular Photography, book by Kim Beil (2020)
The Children’s Photography Archive (CPA):
– Collections – Children’s Photography Archive
– Varvantakis, C., & Nolas, S.-M. (2020). Children as photographers. In Daniel Thomas Cook (Ed.), The SAGE Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood Studies. SAGE Publications.
– Varvantakis, C., & Nolas, S.-M. (2021). Picturing What Really Matters: How photo-story research makes the personal, visible. The Sociological Review Magazine.
– Data protection by design and by default. (2023, May 19). ICO.
– 5Rights | Age Appropriate Design Code. (n.d.). Retrieved June 15, 2023.
– Nolas, S.-M. (2018, July 18). Photo/stories from the field: Anonymous portraits and other practices in the ethics of representation. Childhood Publics Research Programme Blog.
– Association of Canadian Archivists – Where are the Children? A Question of Care for the International Archival Community. (n.d.). Retrieved June 15, 2023.
– IVSA Code of Research Ethics and Guidelines. (2023, March 31). International Visual Sociology Association.
The seminar series is organized by Sevasti-Melissa Nolas, Brenda Herbert, Zoe Walshe (all Goldsmiths, University of London) and Elina Moraitopoulou (Hamburg University/Aristotle University of Thessaloniki) and the Children’s Photography Archive. The events are part of the Sociological Review Seminar Series and have been funded by the Sociological Review Foundation.