DECODING THE GAZE: ICONOGRAPHY AND THE ALGORITHM took place on Friday, 29 November 2019 at The Photographers’ Gallery in London. This one-day symposium explored the role of images in shaping how social justice movements are represented in today’s social media landscape.
Images have always been crucial in revealing social injustice. Shared instantly online across a range of digital platforms, single photographed moments have the potential to define and empower the social justice movements they represent. But the very platforms that increase the currency, speed and reach of images also carry the means to subvert and manipulate their original purpose. How does corporate interest influence the circulation of viral imagery on the channels it controls? What is the relationship between user participation and algorithmic distribution? And to what extent do these algorithms — predicated as they are on historical systems of oppression and inequality — reinforce prejudices and stymie a genuine democratisation of image making?
This symposium offered a deep inquiry into how the political efficacy of social justice movements (from Extinction Rebellion, Black Lives Matter, and Gulf Labor to the protests in Hong Kong, Beirut, and Santiago de Chile) have been impacted by their visualisation in virtual space. Through a series of talks, presentations and debates, it looked at the ways in which these movements have been helped and hindered by the rapid flow of iconic imagery on social media.
Speakers included:
Omar Al-Ghazzi (Department of Media and Communications, LSE)
Clare Farrell (Extinction Rebellion)
Max Ferguson (photographer and photo editor, Financial Times)
Mariam Ghani (artist and activist, Gulf Labor)
Shahla Ghobadi (Information Management, University of Leeds)
Jorge Saavedra Utman (Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge)
Funda Üstek-Spilda (Department of Media and Communications, LSE)
Sampson Wong (artist and activist)
The symposium was moderated by:
Luisa Ulyett (The Photographers’ Gallery)
David Birkin and Max Houghton (Visible Justice)