Photographic Portrait: Convergences, Divergences, Reflections, and Thoughts
Portugal
Organization: Vista Journal
Call for Papers | Photographic Portrait: Convergences, Divergences, Reflections, and Thoughts (No. 16) | From January 31, 2025 to May 2, 2025
Thematic Editors: Helena Pires (Universidade do Minho, Portugal), Eduardo Camilo (Universidade da Beira Interior) and Florin Grigora? (Universitatea Na?ional? de Arte „George Enescu”, Romania)
The call for papers "Photographic Portrait: Convergences, Divergences, Reflections, and Thoughts" seeks to gather works exploring the multifaceted theme of photographic portraiture. Contributions are welcome from a broad range of fields, including but not limited to the history of photography, the philosophy of art and photography, visual culture and photography studies, visual discourse and photography analysis, the semiotics of photography, photography technologies, ethnography and visual anthropology, the sociology of photography and visual communication, photographic image production technologies, and the rhetoric of (photographic) image.
The thematic lines include: (a) theories and philosophical questions of photographic portraits – for example, the concept of photogenic qualities; (b) the art of photographic portraiture – references, influences, aesthetic currents; (c) uses and effects of photographic portraits; (d) technologies for producing photographic portrait – analogue, digital, and smartphone photography; (e) photographic portrait practices – including studio portraits, family and vacation portraits, the photographic snapshots, the self-portraits; (f) cognitive psychology and perception theories – exploring how viewers perceive and interpret photographic portraits; (g) gender and queer studies – examining the role of photographic portraiture in constructing and deconstructing gender identities; (h) postcolonial studies – investigating intersection between photographic portraits and issues of identity, power, and representation in postcolonial contexts; (i) media studies — analysing the role of photographic portraits in digital media and online platforms; (j) memory studies — understanding the significance of photographic portraits in personal and collective memory; (k) ethics and representation theories — discussing ethical considerations in creating and displaying photographic portraits; (l) digital humanities — investigating how computational tools and methods can analyse photographic portraits; (m) marketing and advertising studies — analysing the use of photographic portraits in branding and identity creation; (n) legal studies — addressing copyright, privacy, and intellectual property issues in photographic portraiture; (o) critical race theories — investigating how photographic portraits engage with and represent racial identities and power structures; (p) portfolios — presentation of experiences and photographic works; and (q) and other angles of analysis — as long as they are restricted to this object of study: the photographic portrait.
Considering the above, we propose the following topics for reflection:
· To what extent can the photographic portrait be considered a genre with a singularity distinct from the pictorial portrait?
· What specific characteristics do photographic portraits exhibit in contemporary times? What changes have photographic portraits undergone as a result of being produced by capture technologies directly linked to social networks (smartphones)?
· What foundational principles can be identified in photographic portraits? Could there be an "aesthetic" rooted in their primordial pictorial kinship (Oscar Rejlander, Lady Awerden, Nadar)? A commercial basis, emerging from the "photographic industrialisation" evident in the studio portrait and the historical carte de visite (Disderi)? A ritualistic function of celebration and remembrance akin to the portraits in photo albums? A social foundation tied to practices of identity, identification and social conformity? Or even an autobiographical foundation reflected in the everyday practices of subjective representation and publication on social networks (selfies)?
· What can be inferred about the status of photographic portraits within the consumer society of leisure and travel (holidays)?
· Is it possible to identify photographers whose portrait production is (still) original, critical and reflective, such as the works of artists like Ralph Eugene Martyard or Cindy Sherman?
IMPORTANT DATES
Submission (full manuscript): from January 31, 2025, to May 2, 2025
Journal publication date: continuous edition (July 2025 to December 2025)
LANGUAGE
The manuscripts may be submitted in English or Portuguese. Papers selected for publication will be translated into Portuguese or English and must be published in both languages.
EDITING AND SUBMISSION
Vista is an open-access academic journal following demanding peer-review standards based on a double-blind review process. After submission, the papers will be forwarded to two reviewers, previously invited to evaluate them according to their academic quality, originality, and relevance to the journal's objectives and scope.
Originals must be submitted through the journal's website (https://revistavista.pt/). If you are accessing Vista for the first time, you must register before submitting your article (instructions for registration here).
The guidelines for authors are available here.
For further information, please contact: https://revistavista.pt/index.php/vista/index
Note1: The evaluation and online publishing of the articles and work portfolios is free of charge.
Note2: Vista Journal (created in 2015) is indexed in and integrated into international academic journals and bibliographic databases. The publiher is the Communication and Society Research Centre (CECS) of the University of Minho, Portugal”
https://revistavista.pt/index.php/vista/index
Eduardo J. M. Camilo
