Dear Spectrum members,
Re-openings, the prospects of organising analogue events as well as reunions seem to accelerate this year’s temporal experience. Equally accelerated, we would like to announce updates and reminders on our programme.
New date: Friday 22 October, 12.30-13.30
On Zoom
Originally, the first Spectrum Lunch of 2021 was supposed to be held on 11 June. However, the event is postponed to the second half of this year, October 22.
As a reminder, Estelle Sohier is an associate professor at UNIGE. She holds a PhD in history from the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and the University of Naples Orientale. She worked on the political use of photography during the colonial period and the history of Ethiopian royalty between the 1880s and the 1930s. Sohier conducted research in France, Italy and Ethiopia before joining the Department of Geography and Environment at the University of Geneva in January 2010.
At the crossroads of geography and cultural history, her work focuses on the uses of photography, the history of the gaze, and the notion of geographical imagination. For several years, she has been studying the work of the Geneva-based photographer and editor Fred Boissonnas, in particular his work on Swiss landscapes, Greece, Egypt and the Mediterranean, which formed the basis of the exhibition and publication Fred Boissonnas et la Méditerrannée at the Musée d'art et d'histoire de Genève in 2020.
A detailed programme of her lecture will be sent out later this year.
Friday 2 July 12.30-13.30
On Zoom / In German, French, Italian and English
Our first Spectrum Lunch will now be held on 2 July and focus on cultural formats in pandemic times. As we all know all too well, the pandemic has put a major strain on institutions and individuals alike and jeopardized almost every type of events over the last year. Without giving into the narrative that these circumstances provided a welcoming opportunity for reinvention, many organisations and individuals were able to successfully conceive and implement new formats, covering the production of knowledge and artworks to educational programmes and exchanges.
We'd like to hear from you: have you had positive experiences with new formats, and would you be ready to share them with the other Spectrum members? Have you developed a new educational programme that reached people at home, or children in school? Have you launched projects outdoors or in the digital realm? Have you turned your exhibition space into residency or production spaces?
If you would like to share your experience in a 3 to 5 minutes informal presentation, please write to us. The sharing of experiences until 21 June as well as the registrations until 30 June go to spectrum@photography-in-switzerland.ch.
We are very glad to have received some completed surveys! Nonetheless, for a better understanding of the independent and freelance cultural workers’ situation over the last year, we kindly ask all our individual members to have a look into our survey. If you are an individual member of Spectrum but are salaried and do not work as a freelancer at all, the survey does not apply to you. For everyone else, the survey is entirely anonymous and takes 3 to 10 minutes.
Deadline: 15.06.2021
Saturday 21 August
At ETH Bibliothek, Zürich
Due to the uncertainty surrounding large events and concerns for the safety of all people involved, we decided not to hold a Spectrum Weekend this year, after postponing it from 2020. We are however looking forward to welcoming you again – if all goes well physically present – at the ETH Bibliothek for a day of debates, exchange and discovery around photography.
The full programme will follow soon.
We are very much looking forward to seeing our Spectrum members soon again, even though only online for now! Until then, we wish you all the best!
In the name of the Spectrum board,
Danaé Panchaud
President