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We Are All Still Living off 20th Century Curriculums and Ideas about Photography
Interview with Professor David Bate
- Vol. 4, no. 1
- 2019
- https://doi.org/10.47659/m6.020.int
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We Are All Still Living off 20th Century Curriculums and Ideas about Photography
Interview with Professor David Bate
- Vol. 4, no. 1
- 2019
- 14/04/2020

Summary
Bio
References
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We meet with David Bate, artist and theorist working in photography in a Portuguese cafe in London the day the United Kingdom is holding what will most probably be its last European Parliamentary elections. The country has been at the forefront of education in photography, offering a record number of university degrees which historically were pioneer in introducing critical theory as part of the curriculum. But today this situation might have changed. The conversation flows freely between Bate’s experience of growing up in a working class area in 1970s UK and the realities of today’s educational and social system, the correlation between theory and practice and the paradoxes of the digital image and our current relation to it, aiming to introduce (or update) our readers to one of the most thought provoking and rigorous critical practitioners (which is to say, thinkers) working in and with the medium today.
- Keywords: certainty and photography, David Bate, image virtuality, photography and truth, photography education, representation
Andreia Alves de Oliveira is a photo artist, researcher and lecturer based in London. She holds a PhD (2014) and an MA (2009) in photographic studies from the University of Westminster and is visiting lecturer in Photography at Birmingham City University. Previously, she studied law and worked as a lawyer. Andreia’s practice and research are concerned with the notion of artistic research, as well as the theory of photography and theories of representation, in relation to concepts of space and the everyday. www.andreiaoliveira.net
David Bate is an artist and theorist working in photography. His books Photography: The Key Concepts (2nd edition, Bloomsbury, 2016), Art Photography (Tate Publishing, 2015), Photography and Surrealism (IB Tauris, 2004) as well as the journal photographies (Routledge, 2009–) of which he is a co-founding editor, are perhaps the most popular representatives of a career that spans more than 30 years and includes numerous essays and art works crucial to a critical understanding of the medium through time and across different geographies. Teaching has been a constant activity in Bate’s career, and it was at the University of Westminster (formerly, the Polytechnic of Central London), where he is Professor of Photography.
- Bate, D. 2018. “Camera Phones and Mobile Intimacies.” In: The Evolution of the Image. Political Action and the Digital Self, edited by Marco Bohr and Basia Sliwinska, Ch. 1. New York: Routledge.
- Manovich, L. et. all. 2014. Selfiecity. Accessed May 30. Available online here.
- Stiegler, B. 2016. Automatic Society: The Future of Work. Cambridge: Polity Press.
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I don’t think we are victims of technology, we are agents of technology.
Reading time: 31 min.
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