Hippolyte Bayard, 1842 (public domain)
Hippolyte Bayard, 1842 (public domain)

Evenemanget hålls på engelska.

Photographs have been used to illustrate a great variety of genres within children’s literature. While many photographic illustrations from the beginning of the 20th century use staged scenes, or were part of the avantgarde experimentations within the media, documentary ambitions became increasingly common during the 1930s and 1940s and the photographic picturebook becomes a modern, educational and ideological medium. Many photographers and authors have created photobooks for children by combining photography with other artistic techniques, such as collage, photomontage and photograms. Inspired by ideas of a vanguard aesthetics, modernist artists often regarded photography as an aesthetic means to differentiate from the past in terms of form, style, and language. Similar kind of ideas can be traced in radical publishing for children during the 1960s and 1970s. As a result, within children’s literature, the choice of photography as a medium often expressed high aesthetic demands, but also ideological objectives. Thus, research concerning photography within children’s literature is also closely connected to ideas and changes in the conceptions of childhood, which impact on the depiction of children in relation to cultural transformation and social change.    

The symposium at Stockholm University will introduce leading scholars from seven countries and offers a meeting point for exchange of knowledge and research results within children’s literature, illustration history and photography. The symposium is admission free and open for all.

Speakers:

Katharine Capshaw, Laurence Le Guen, Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer, Olle Widhe, Jane Wattenberg, Monica Ruethers, Marnie Campagnaro, Anita Wincencjusz-Patyna, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, Jörg Meibauer and Elina Druker.

Exhibition

A small exhibition with Karin Fryxell’s iconic Sotlugg-and Linlugg photobooks will be available at the symposium during Thursday.

Programme

Day I 19 March

09:30

Welcome

09:45–10:30 

Olle Widhe 

Zacharias Topelius and Scherer and Engler’s Ein Tag aus dem Kinder-Leben from 1877

10:30–11:15

Marnie Campagnaro

 “A successful photograph is worth as much as a story”: The influence of Photography on Bruno Munari’s picturebooks

Coffee

11:45–12:30

Anita Wincencjusz-Patyna 

From Halley’s Comet to Scout Kwapiszon: On Photomontage in Polish Children’s Fiction in the 20th Century

Lunch

13:45–14:30

Mette Kia Krabbe Meyer

Immigrants and Elves: The Everyday and the Fantastic in Danish Photographical Children’s Books

14:30–15:15

Jane Wattenberg 

Spellbound: Lona, Dare Wright’s Haunting Photo-Fairytale

Coffee

15:30–16:15

Monica Rüthers

The visual construction of an all-Soviet childhood in Soviet Photobooks

16:15–17:00

Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer and Jörg Meibauer

Portrait of the child as a socialist: An inquiry into photographic picturebooks of the GDR

Day II 20 March

09:30–10:15

Laurence Le Guen

From the ‘Children of all Lands Stories’ to the ‘Enfants du monde’ collection, providing a view of the Other in children’s literature

10:15–11:00     

Elina Druker 

In and out of focus: Anna Riwkin’s photojournalism and photographic picturebooks

Coffee

11:30–12:30

Katharine Capshaw

Images that Control and Disrupt: 
The United States’ Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s

Final words