This workshop is the first in a series of discussions about photographs as objects with which to trace the Armenian past and present. How do we read photographic images? How can photographs be deployed as autonomous sources for reading the past, rather than as props for written texts? How can they be used as a way to think about material production? We will reflect on how photography complements the study of Armenian history at the same time as it enriches and questions the field of visual culture. The notion of witnessing and rendering legible objects of photographs will be interrogated. What do photographs hide and what do they reveal? How can we read the internal tensions that photographs visualize productively to write about trauma and violence?

Complete workshop program: http://ii.umich.edu/content/dam/asp-assets/asp-documents/new-workshop-program.pdf

Organizers: Kathryn Babayan, Armenian Studies Program Director, Yaşar Tolga Cora and David Low, Manoogian Post-doctoral Fellows