KEVIN MOORE

FotoFocus announces Second Century: Photography, Feminism, Politics, a one-day symposium to be held at Memorial Hall, Cincinnati, on October 7, 2017. The symposium brings together a rich diversity of speakers to address a broad range of topics revolving around feminist approaches to photography and the political underpinnings of contemporary art practice.

“Second Century” plays with the title of Simone de Beauvoir’s seminal text, The Second Sex, of 1949, a book that dealt with the treatment of women throughout history and marks the starting point of second-wave feminism. Second-wave feminism built upon first-wave feminism’s concern for suffrage and equal property rights to focus more broadly on sexuality, family, workplace rights, and other forms of inequality, both tacit and legal. Now, well down the path of third-wave feminism (or fourth-wave feminism, or postfeminism, as third-wave feminism is by definition hard to define), the current socio-political climate broadly embraces different feminine identities, including queer and transgender. Second Century: Photography, Feminism, Politics acknowledges the absorption and application of myriad feminist ideals and practices at the beginning of a second century of organized and evolved feminist approaches to art and politics.

Second Century panels, comprising international as well as local participants, will explore feminist approaches to photography and lens-based art at the intersection of current political concerns, with topics ranging from the January 21, 2017, Women’s March on Washington and subsequent political activism; Latin American films by female directors; and feminist engagement of photography both as conceptual art practice and widespread implication through social media practices. The symposium will also feature a prominent keynote speaker. Details regarding participants and programs are to be announced.