What comes after selfies?

How does it feel to be living in the post-photographic age?

That's the term scholars are using for the "second stage of the digital era … the proliferation of mobile phones and networking and all of that," says Martha Langford, Concordia's organizer of an upcoming conference called À partir d’aujourd’hui … Reconsidering Postphotography.

The October 1-3 meeting, a joint project of Concordia, the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM), and Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal (MPM) is open to the public. It's part of Montreal's long-established photography biennial, which itself focuses this year on "The Post-Photographic Condition."

That theme was conceived by Joan Fontcuberta, the Catalan artist and author who is guest curator for le Mois de la Photo.

In scholarly circles, the word "photography" is increasingly coming to mean video as well as still images. "We're talking about visual recording media more generally," says Langford, a professor in the Department of Art History. "Le Mois de la Photo itself has moved quite dramatically in the direction of video" in recent years. "But as we put the conference together … people really did return to the still photograph."

The international conference features three keynote speakers and four daytime sessions, including a full Friday morning of panels organized by doctoral students Julie-Ann Latulippe (UQAM) and Samuel Gaudreau-Lalande (Concordia).

The entire event is focused around three main topics, Langford explains. The first of these, led by Fontcuberta, deals with how ubiquitous and incessant photography may be changing the role of human memory.

"This debate goes back to Plato," she notes. "He said that not all people should learn to write, because he thought loss of the oral tradition would adversely affect people’s ability to remember. Now of course there's so much photography, some people say, that why should we fix anything in memory?"

Today any museum-goer can see how "some adolescents are using a camera as almost a surrogate for actually being in the world, with selfies and so on," she says. This raises "questions about living life through the camera. The conference will explore all that."

The second theme, the one on which Langford will contribute directly, is "more of the naysayers' section, for people who see a lot more continuity," she says. "Really the patterning of consciousness doesn't change within 20 years, or two cycles of photographic invention. It's a lot deeper and longer than that.

"My section will also look at the way photography today doesn't need professional equipment … everyone taking their own picture in their own situation … so you have a million pictures. A lot of scholars are very interested in that, how it takes photography out of the realm of the old decisive historical moment, and into this daily feed.

"This summer we're hearing that, as the U.S. presidential election campaign warms up, candidates are having to allot a minimum of 30 minutes per stop for people to take selfies. It's just all around you. My interest in this is, are we simply using new terms for old conventional phenomena, or are we actually seeing new things?"

The third major section of the conference will look at "photography as evidence, in criminal trials and so on … Digital photography was supposed to have damaged our faith in photography. Is that the case?” The leader of this session is Vincent Lavoie, Professor of Art History at UQAM and Langford's opposite number in setting up the conference.

"Vincent and other colleagues in that section have been researching what questions were asked of a photograph before, and now. The citizen journalists who are making videos of beatings on the street and so on, this is something new."

Reconsidering Postphotography will take place in the J.A. DeSève Cinema, located in the J.W. McConnell Library Building (LB) on the Sir George Williams Campus. Consult the full schedule.

The three evening keynotes will be hosted by the Canadian Centre for Architecture (1920 Baile St.).

Free registration for all events is strongly recommended.

The conference serves as the kick-off for Concordia's Speaking of Photography — an annual lecture series launched in 2007.