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The 2nd RPS Historical Group and University of Wolverhampton (BA Hons) Photography) Research Symposium
Date: Saturday 14th March 2026 Time: 09:45am - 16:30pm
Location: Wolverhampton School of Art & Online via Zoom
Sign up for the event here
The Royal Photographic Society Historical Group, in partnership with the Photography Department (Creative Industries), University of Wolverhampton, presents a symposium that brings together researchers and practitioners to explore photography’s evolving role across post-digital imaging, nineteenth-century visual culture, material processes, and the ethical complexities of archival practice.
Across four interconnected thematic sessions, the symposium examines how photographic practices shape social concerns, cultural memory, technological innovation, and contemporary visual life. From machine perception and revived analogue techniques to Victorian scientific photography and the ethical dimensions of archives, the programme offers fresh perspectives on how photography’s enduring significance continues to shape present debates and future possibilities.
Call for paper information can be found in this document - RPS - call for papers researchsymposium - 14th-march 2026 (Word doc 274k)
Key Event Themes
Explore the key themes of the event
This session explores photography’s transformation in post-digital culture, examining how machine vision, algorithmic interpretation, and computational systems reshape the production and circulation of images. From experiments with facial‑expression recognition to the role of platform-generated imagery and digitally revived historical environments, the talks in this session highlight the expanding terrain of photographic authorship and perception.
Focusing on nineteenth‑century photographic history, this session foregrounds the experimental, documentary, and cultural functions of early image‑making. Through investigations into cinematic apparatus, scientific imaging, and landmark exhibitions, the papers illuminate how Victorian photography shaped public understanding of visibility, extinction, and representation.
Centred on techniques, materials, and modes of production, this session investigates how historical printing methods are revived yet environmentally re-situated by contemporary practitioners. From innovative approaches to alternative processes, and to ecologically focused darkroom practices and genealogical reassessments of historical methodologies, these papers highlight the persistence and reinvention of craft within photographic culture.
This session examines the ethical and political stakes of archival photography, foregrounding the complex journeys images undertake as they circulate through personal collections, institutional repositories, and digital platforms. From the afterlives of human rights imagery to the representation of children in contested archives and the re-reading of family photographs as sites of identity and restitution, the papers explore how photographs act as intimate evidence of lived experience.
Event Agenda
9:00 Registration
9:45 Welcome by Organisers
10:00 – 11:20 Section 1: Post‑Digital Imaging & Computational Vision
Malita Dahl: Deadpan artefacts: Creative Experiments with Facial Expression Recognition in Photographic Portraiture
Mark Bessondo: Photography in Flux: Google Street View as Post-Photographic System
Dr George L. Mutter: 3D Digital Revival of 19th Century Egypt as Captured by Vintage Stereophotography
11:20 Coffee / Tea Break
11:30 – 12:50 Section 2: Victorian Visual Culture & the Emergence of Photographic Modernity
Dr David Barber: ‘Scenes at Balmoral’ (1896): A Cinematograph Mystery Solved?
Dr Rosalind Haynes: Imaging on the Edge of Invisibility: Photography and Extinction in Victorian Britain
Dr Sarah French: A Photographic Retrospective: The Royal Photographic Society’s International Exhibition at the Crystal Palace, 1898
12:50 - 13:30 Lunch
13:30 – 14:50 Section 3: Material Practices & Photographic Production
Craig Mehra: Titania Type Prints: A new way of printing impressions of photographs
Aindres Scholz: Ecological Wetroom and Prussian Blue: Re-activating Cyanotype’s Material Histories
Alan Hodgson: The Becquerel Dynasty: Setting the record straight
14:50 - 15:10 Coffee / Tea Break
15:10 - 16:30 Section 4: Archives, Ethics & the Afterlives of Images
Dr Nelly Ating: Sales, Human Rights Photographs, and the Platform Economy: The Digital Afterlife of an Anti-Apartheid Image
Maria Vaz: lustríssimos/Most Illustrious: The Presence of Children within a Contested Archive
Angela Brown: Rethinking Identity and Redeeming History through Family Photographs
View last years RPS Conference 2025 Details (Word doc 17k)