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Views from Below. Engagements with Vernacular Lens Media Archives

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GPS400: Centre for Collaborative Visual Research

On March 13, 2025, the research group VISU – Histories of Art, Architecture and Visual Culture at Vrije Universiteit Brussel hosted a symposium focusing on the role of vernacular photography and amateur film in visual archives. Under the title Views from Below. Engagements with Vernacular Lens Media Archives, researchers from Sweden, Netherlands, Croatia, and Belgium, gathered to explore how visual documents from the 20th century – often produced outside of professional image-making practices – can contribute to alternative historiographical perspectives. The symposium highlighted how such archival materials offer insights into migration, labour, bureaucracy, and queer experiences.

Symposium: Views from Below. Engagements with Vernacular Lens Media Archives

VISU – Histories of Art, Architecture and Visual Culture

Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Thursday, March 13, 2025
Campus Etterbeek, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels
Room C2.07a

Program

10:00 – 10:30
Karl-Magnus Johansson, Swedish National Archives, Gothenburg
Bureaucratic Gaze as Vernacular Photography? Work Environment Documentation in Post-war Sweden

10:30 – 11:00
Sandra Križić Roban, Institute of Art History, Zagreb
Human Labour and the Workers’ Position in Factories through Vernacular Lenses - Some Examples from Croatian Archives

11:00 – 11:30
Mats Jönsson, University of Gothenburg
Peripheral Focus: Excess Information in Swedish Amateur Film Travelogues 1950–1980 

11:30 – 12:00
Ella Dezuttere, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Queer Archives through the Lens of Art

12:00 – 13:00
Lunch Break

13:00 – 13:30
Niclas Östlind, University of Gothenburg
Migration Seen Through Lens Media: Visualizations of National Housing Project “Miljonprogrammet”

13:30 – 14:00
Katarzyna Ruchel-Stockmans & Zoë Kennis, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Epistemic Reparations Approach to Digital Photographic Archives

14:00 – 14:30
Alina Cristea, LUCA School of Arts
Encounters with the Romanian Archives: In-between Personal Family History and Collective History

14:30 – 15:00
Closing Remarks

Area
Culture and languages Society and economy
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