Alfred Stieiglitz's The Steerage (1907) is a canonical photograph of fine art modernist photography.

 

What happens if we forget about the modernist discourse on photography and the repression of content this involved and start with the picture to see where it takes us?

 

This is the intention of this paper and it leads straight to the issue of ‘migration’. In recent years migration has become of great concern in relation to the question of ‘who we are?’.

 

My presentation proposes that the form of Stieglitz's picture is not simply an abstract formalism, but is linked to the dimension of migration as encoded within the picture and sublimated within the symbolism of it that Stieglitz famously meditates upon. 

​

18.30: Talk "KIN" by Neil Massey, Photographer.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

SOCIAL MEDIA - Is this your KIN?

 

Is the question photographer Neil Massey is trying to find out. With Project KIN Neil aims is to re-unite Vietnamese families living around the globe with their family photographs. Through the use of social media he hopes to return these personal artifacts to their rightful owners, he is interested to learn more about the circumstances of how they became estranged and the history behind the individuals in them.

 

All of these photographs were bought in markets and antique shops in Saigon by Neil who lived there with his family between 2009-2015. He says “What intrigued me about these photographs, was the documentation of a period of Vietnam pre-war. The war is well covered, but these images offer us a glimpse into a time of relative peace when people holidayed, went to weddings, and visited the local photographers studio to pose in the latest fashions”.

 

In 1975 in the weeks leading up to 30th April with the ‘Fall of Saigon’ or ‘Liberation of Saigon’, over 130,000 South Vietnamese had to flee for their lives. In the panic and chaos they left behind their homes and all their personal possessions. Of the 3 million Overseas Vietnamese, a majority of them left as refugees after 1975. However many more millions were unable to leave the country facing the consequences of the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (Việt Cộng).

​

18:45 Migrant domestic workers in Singapore,  by Julio Etchart – Visual Journalist

 

As a former political exile I made one of my pledges to cover the plight of those that are forced to leave their countries for political, social and economic reasons, and I have been covering such issues for decades.

 

I would like to share one such project, which I worked on during my recent stay in Singapore, while working for the Communications and New Media department of the National University of Singapore.

We worked with foreign domestic workers, mainly from the Philippines and Myanmar, who had been mistreated and abused by their employers. The faculty partnered with HOME, a local NGO who provides shelter, legal advice and training to the women who seek their assistance.

                   

I shot stills and video to produce a documentary for a mass media campaign, and also facilitated workshops in photo-voice participatory photography with a group of the ladies who took part in the project.

​