Centre for Visual Cultures, Royal Holloway, University of London
Egham, Surrey, UK TW20 0EX
Friday 5 June 2020
Sport in its modern form developed contemporaneously with photography,
and the growth of sport into a global phenomenon has been decisively influenced
by its mediation in visual culture and photography. Photographs of sport, and
of its most popular athletes, have long been essential not only to sports
reporting but also to the commercial exploitation of professional sport as a
form of spectacle and entertainment. Just as sport itself is open to a wide
range of symbolic and political interpretations, certain sports photographs
have transcended the ephemeral nature of daily reports to enter the popular
imagination and collective memory. Equally, private photographs of junior and
grassroots sport are increasingly valued as part of sporting heritage. Even in
the age of television and the internet, the still photograph remains an
essential element of sport as a cultural phenomenon.
Yet, as Mike O’Mahony observes in Photography and Sport (Reaktion,
2018), definitions of ‘sports photography’ have tended to be narrow, and the
history of photographs of sport has only recently begun to receive the academic
attention accorded to other photographic genres. Only rarely are sports
photographs taken seriously in their own right. ‘Photographs taken during key
sporting events […] are assumed […] to derive their value and meaning from an
awareness of the event rather than the intrinsic values of the image itself’
(O’Mahony 11).
This colloquium aims to contribute to an ongoing process of challenging
these assumptions through scholarly and critical engagement with the
relationship between photography and sport. We invite proposals for 20-minute
papers on neglected or original aspects of this relationship, and welcome
approaches that take an historical, theoretical or practical approach.
Transnational and comparative approaches are very welcome.
Possible topics might include:
- Definitions of sports photography
- Sports photography as historical source
- Sports photography and aesthetics
- Assessments of the work of individual photographers
- Critical readings of particular photographs
- Photography and sports heritage
- Photography and fan culture
- Sports photography and race / gender
- Sports photography in the digital age
- Sports photography and place
Exhibition
Next summer Royal Holloway will be hosting an exhibition of the football
photography of the renowned British photojournalist Peter Robinson (‘Beyond the
Back Page: The Football Photography of Peter Robinson’, 27 April – 28 June
2020), jointly curated by Dr Jon Hughes and Ellis Huddart. During his long
career Robinson has covered numerous World Cup Finals and Olympic Games and
from 1970 to 1994 he was the Official Photographer to FIFA.
The exhibition will not only display some of Robinson’s best images of
football action and football stars such as Pele, Maradona, Best and Cruyff, but
also showcase his distinctive eye for less commonly featured aspects of game
around the world, at grassroots level, among fans and communities, and as a
business driven by the media.
We hope that Peter Robinson will be in attendance on the day of the
colloquium, and an optional curator-guided tour of the exhibition will form a
part of the day’s events.
Please send abstracts of 200-250 words for 20-minute papers to Jon
Hughes (jon.hughes@rhul.ac.uk) by not later than Friday 28 February 2020.
Please also include full contact details and a short bio-text or link to an
online profile.
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