FORMAT25 Conference

FORMAT25 Conference: CONFLICTED

Throughout history societies, civilizations and cultures have been subject to division and catastrophic change amidst periods of stability and peace. Recent times have borne witness to what would seem to be one monumental change and challenge after the other – a seemingly endless slew of emergencies including the Covid pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis, catastrophic wars, coupled with a sense – across the globe – that political populism is becoming the norm. Consensus, agreement and simple kindness can at times seem to be at a premium. The world is a conflicted place.

So too is the medium that is often relied upon to arbitrate and give witness to the unfolding of events and circumstances in which our lives change and are challenged. Far from offering the assumed sanctuary of objectivity, the meanings lean to photographic images are predicated upon uncertainty and ambivalence, often resulting in interpretations and applications that incite argument and validate prejudice, rather than promote conciliation and cooperation.

Yet, photography is a medium that can have an uncanny ability to speak truth to power, to succinctly and powerfully reflect the world about us, and to make us stop, think and reset. Who better to help us through this time, to guide us and to help us understand, than the artist, the photographer, the filmmaker?

Hosted by FORMAT and organised by academics from the University of Derby, the conference will feature presentations by a range of speakers providing an international perspective on the relationships between photography and the conflicted world in which we live.

Full cost: £30

Concessions: £20 (with proof of ID, i.e. Student ID)

Summaries of presentations

Host of the conference: Jane Boyer (France) 

Jane Boyer is an independent lens-based artist, curator, academic researcher and publisher. She is co-director of [cloud] collective with Dr Gemma Marmalade of University of Derby. Jane’s practise and research is concerned with the recurring influences of the past that are at work in our present actions. She completed a Fine Art PhD at Cambridge School of Art, Anglia Ruskin University in 2021. She exhibits and publishes internationally. Jane lives and works in France.

Full cost: £30

Concessions: £20 (with proof of ID, i.e. Student ID)

David Bate (University of Westminster, UK) Keynote

The Conflicted Image

As the keynote presentation for the conference, David Bate will address key questions that have become so pertinent to the role of photographic images in contemporary culture. How do images of conflict intersect with ideas of consensus? How do images of consensus intersect with ideas of conflict? What kind of agency does a ‘conflict image’ have in contemporary society and how does it operate in the attention economy and social media age? How can creative photographic practices navigate these situations and our relation to conflictual feelings?

Felicity Hammond (Kingston University, UK)

Variations

Felicity Hammond will discuss her current project, Variations, a work of multi-iterative visual research that addresses the development and impact of generative AI. Each installation of the work will be photographically documented, and the resulting images used as a training set for the next exhibition; as in AI image-creation, the logic from past datasets will therefore be reiterated in new work. Staged in four venues across the UK, Variations is an evolving installation exploring the relationship between geological mining and data mining, and image-making and machine learning. Variation 2: Rigged is exhibited as part of FORMAT25.

Megan Carnrite (University of Westminster, UK)

Play and Production: The Role of Boundary Breaking Play in the Photographic Darkroom

Megan Carnrite examines photographic production as an operation of transgression, exploration, and examination. This is achieved through play, a play which is made possible by the freedom and darkness of the analogue photographic darkroom, allowing for the exploration of material experimentation, from socially taboo behaviours to total destruction, which aim to dismantle boundaries and develop a new sense of self and of the outside world. While the photographic print is for public consumption, the print’s production, the photographic play, is for the benefit of the individual. Through examining the value of play, Carnrite foregrounds the subversive possibilities of the actual process of photographic production.

Linda Alterwitz (Independent artist, USA)

Injection Site: Making Vaccines Visible (2021-2023)

Linda Alterwitz will discuss her project in which she intended to address the politically charged global medical crisis of COVID-19. The project involved the use of a high-resolution thermal camera to photograph the arms of participants after vaccination. This has resulted in images over 130 participants, each image documenting and creating a visual trace of each person’s reaction to the vaccine. Rather than providing a simple scientific record, the ethereal images serve as evocative statements about individuality and our collective humanity. The presentation will discuss how the project was intended to avoid being a polemic statement, but rather to cause pause for thought, to ignite conversation, and promote a mutual consideration for the actions and feeling of others, during a period when the health and wellbeing for all of us was such a contentious and divisive issue.

Lesia Maruschak (independent artist, Canada)

The Gaze of Innocence and Voice of Silence

In times of war, art becomes more than expression—it is resistance, witness, and survival. This presentation explores the work of Ukrainian-Canadian artist Lesia Maruschak, whose works confront historical and contemporary genocide. By weaving photography, poetry, sound, and archival materials, Maruschak collapses time, connecting the Holodomor to Russia’s ongoing forced deportation and/or displacement of Ukrainian children. Her work is not only a documentation of trauma but also an interactive, participatory corpus that is founded on the principle of audience engagement. Through an analysis of her creative strategies, this presentation examines the role of art in preserving memory, resisting erasure, and fostering hope. In a world where war seeks to silence, Maruschak’s practice asserts that to create is to defy destruction and affirm a future.

Nataliia Dniprenko (Cara/British Academy Researchers at Risk Fellow, University for the Creative Arts, Associate Professor of Television Directing at the Kyiv National I. K. Karpenko-Kary Theatre, Cinema and Television University in Ukraine, PhD., Ukraine).

In conversation with Philip Harris (University of Derby, UK)

Of Conflict, Media, and Culture: a Ukrainian Experience

The war in Ukraine has changed the reality for many artists, researchers, and cultural figures, forcing them to seek new formats for creativity and communication. This is a continuation of Nataliia Dniprenko’s long-term research into communication practices during times of crisis (Dniprenko, 2008) in which she explores how new communication strategies emerge in response to external challenges. Dniprenko examines how online genres have become not just a means of adapting to new conditions, but a real space for preserving cultural identity and finding new forms of artistic expression. The importance of online culture for Ukrainians has only increased since the outbreak of the war. It became a tool for supporting national identity, a platform for cultural diplomacy, and a space where Ukrainians could feel united, continue their scientific and creative work.

Gemma Marmalade and Steve Watson (University of Derby, UK)

I love America and America hates me

I love America and America hates me is a critical presentation by lens based artist, Gemma Marmalade and film maker, Stephen Watson. Reflecting on the work of the same title made by Marmalade and Watson, this film and still image installation is a reimagining of German artist Joseph Beuys’ seminal 1974 performance piece, I like America and America likes me. Beuys made this work where he reluctantly arrived in America for the first time amidst his anxiety towards the political actions of the USA and their global influence.

Fifty years later, I love America and America hates me meditates on the same conflictedness felt by Beuys, now contextualised in the twenty-first century by a female protagonist. In sharing a lexicon of visual and performative symbolism with Beuys, this work was made in Nevada on the 20th January 2025 – Donald J. Trump’s second inauguration as the 47th President of the United States of America. This visual testimony navigates an uncanny allegory of symptomatic estrangement from the current socio-political landscape.

 Alicia Bruce (University of Edinburgh, UK)

The Greatest 36 Holes? Coming Soon

In 2006, Donald Trump announced plans to build “The Greatest Golf Course in the World” on Aberdeenshire’s dynamic coastline, an area designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) for its ecological significance. For Alicia Bruce, the Menie dunes held personal significance. She grew up nearby and played on them as a child. Now a second Trump course is under construction in the area. This new series, exhibiting at Format, builds on Bruce’s critically acclaimed monograph, I Burn But I Am Not Consumed (Daylight Books, 2023). Her ongoing documentation of Trump’s developments in Menie serves as a humane and poignant portrait of a community in conflict.

Jaskirt Dhaliwal-Boora (Birmingham City University, UK)

Healing from Trauma

Over the last five years Dhaliwal-Boora has work worked with vulnerable women and girls, often who have experienced male violence and/or trauma. She works as practice-based researcher at Birmingham City University, and has an active visual arts practice. In September 2022, Dhaliwal-Boora began researching reports, data and statistics on violence against women and girls to gain a better understanding of the issues women face and how she could channel that into creating artwork for social change. In her work, Dhaliwal-Boora asks what are the immediate needs of women and girls who have experienced male violence, and can art act as a catalyst for social change or a tool for healing from trauma? Photography has a long history of being an extractive process, Dhaliwal-Boora questions the ethics of working with vulnerable people and to what extent can a socially engaged practice benefit its participants.

Les Monaghan (University of South Wales, UK)

Documentary photography will not change anything if it continues to only speak to art audiences

Les Monaghan argues that if we expect photography to change the world we need to heed lessons of the past and incorporate a contemporary participant centred approach. His documentary project Relative Poverty (2016 -19) engaged directly with the difficulties of portraying poverty. Being displayed in public settings it potentially offers a template for a socially useful, engaged documentary practice.

Motivated by his concern at the rise of destitution in the UK, Monaghan asks how effective could documentary photography be in shifting public perceptions of poverty and whether a position of compassion is required to elicit compassion in others and encourage them to “do something” on seeing images of those in poverty.

Geoff Weston (independent artist, UK)

in conversation with Philip Harris (University of Derby, UK)

Michael Ormerod: American Photographs

The body of work left by Michael Ormerod, who was killed in the US in 1991, has now become established as a key visual commentary on the underbelly of the United States. Ormerod’s legacy has largely been represented by the posthumous publication of States of America (Cornerhouse, 1993), that included a collection of now iconic colour images that portrayed an image rather distant from the ideals promoted in the American media. However, a more recent publication, American Photographs (RRB Photobooks, 2024) throws light on the many previously unseen black and white images made by Ormerod throughout his travels in the USA.

James Hyman (Founding Director, Centre for British Photography)

Elegy for John Blakemore (1936 – 2025)

James Hyman will lead an elegy for acclaimed photographer and educationalist, John Blakemore, who sadly parted from us at the start of this year. John Blakemore taught photography at the University of Derby for three decades, imparting his immense wisdom with such measure and modesty to hundreds of photographers. Coupled with his own practice as a photographer, he extended the thought processes and practices of photography beyond any conventional understanding. As a teacher, artist, and fellow human being, his influence will remain a pivotal experience for those whose paths crossed with his. The elegy will provide opportunities for respectful contributions from the floor.

Additional speakers to be confirmed.

Image by Maxim Dondyuk, from OUR RIUKZAK: Maria + Yehor by Lesia A. Maruschack, VYDNO Collective