Note the new time of 5:00 pm for all lectures. The AGM is at 4:30 pm prior to the 10 May lecture. (Details of the forthcoming lecture are given below the table )
Background to the 2021 series of OASA Zoom lectures
| Date | Speaker | Title |
| 8 February | Dr Richard Ormond | Sargent and Spain |
| 8 March 4.30pm | AGM Cancelled | |
| 8 March 5.00pm | Tim Moreton Cancelled | ‘A likeness pleases every body’ – Portraits in literature |
| 10 May 4.30pm 10 May 5.00pm | AGM Prof Geoff Batchen | In Absentia: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph |
| 14 June | Dr. Dillian Gordon | From Paris to Siena via Avignon? The enduring enigma of the Wilton Diptych. |
| 11 October | Dr. Martin Gayford | Talking to Artists |
| 8 November | Prof. Martin Kemp | President’s Inaugural Lecture Hockney’s Eye. Thoughts on the Cambridge exhibition, ‘Hockney in Perspective’. |
Professor Geoffrey Batchen
In Absentia: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph
Lecture to the Oxford Art Society Associates, 10 May 2021 at 5.00pm
In Absentia: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph
How can a photograph of nothing – of nothing discernible or apparently significant—be said to offer a unique insight into the world around us?
How can a photograph that represents, but does not depict, a given situation be freighted with historical knowledge and import? Looking at examples of cameraless photographs from the 1830s until now, this paper will ask these questions with a view to determining the value of such photographs for today.
Below: Shimpei Takeda (Japan/USA), Trace #7, Nihonmatsu Castle (Nihonmatsu, Fukushima), 2012, gelatin silver photograph.
This lecture will be set up through Eventbrite in the near future.
To find out how to download and use Zoom, click HERE
GEOFFREY BATCHEN holds the Professorship of the History of Art in the Department of the History of Art at the University of Oxford. Geoff’s work as a teacher, writer and curator focuses on the history of photography. His publications include Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography (1997); Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History (2001); Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance (2004); William Henry Fox Talbot (2008); What of Shoes: Van Gogh and Art History (2009); Suspending Time: Life, Photography, Death (2010); Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph (2016); Apparitions: Photography and Dissemination (2018);
and Negative/Positive: A History of Photography (2021). He has also edited Photography Degree Zero: Reflections on Roland Barthes’s Camera Lucida (2009) and co-edited Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis (2012).
His curated exhibitions have been shown at, among other places, the Museu Nacional de Belas Artes in Rio de Janeiro; the New England Regional Art Museum in Amridale, Australia; the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam; the National Media Museum in Bradford, UK; the International Center of Photography in New York; the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne; the Izu Photo Museum in Shizuoka, Japan; the National Museum of Iceland in Reykjavik; the Adam Art Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand; the Govett-Brewster Art Gallery in New Plymouth, NZ; and the Centre for Contemporary Photography in Melbourne, Australia.
He is currently working on a pair of exhibitions for the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
Background to The OASA Zoom Lecture Programme for 2021
Those of you who are members of the OASA will already have received details of our very exciting programme for 2021. Friends and other visitors to our web pages can see these details here on the OASA Lectures page.
Those of you who are members of the OASA will already have received details of our very exciting programme for 2021. Friends and other visitors to our web pages can see these details below.
We are very fortunate that three of our lecturers whose talks were cancelled last year have agreed to speak this year and in addition, we have been able to secure the services of three further, outstanding, speakers to complete the programme. This includes our illustrious new President, Prof. Martin Kemp, who will deliver his inaugural lecture about David Hockney to us, at the end of the year.
All lectures this year will be given on Zoom, the web-based videoconferencing facility. As you know, this technology has allowed people to keep in touch on a face-to-face basis during the pandemic and for the OASA it offers us the opportunity attend lectures from the comfort of our own homes while we are confined to barracks.
One of the enjoyable aspects of past programmes has been the opportunity to engage in discussion with the lecturer at the end of each talk and this possibility will retained with our Zoom lectures, which will allow us to send in questions via the ‘chat’ facility or ask questions directly at the end of the talks.
Because we are using Zoom, we will of course be able to accommodate a much larger audience than was possible in the past and we shall be looking to attract the interest of students and of members of other art societies to join us
It will be necessary to register on a web page to attend each lecture and we will be letting you know how to do this in a week or so, posting information on this OASA web page and also by email if we have your address.
If you are an OASA member and haven’t received your new membership card, please let Sarah Thorn, our membership secretary know, by sending your mailing and email addresses to her at: sarahthorn63@yahoo.co.uk or calling on: 07811926578
We are looking forward to welcoming you to our new series of lecture and hope to see you there.
Sincerely,
Tony Bron
Chairman of the OASA On behalf of the OASA Committee