Edinburgh Napier University

  Owing to the ubiquity, multifaceted uses, and vast volume of photographs that exist in physical and online worlds, photography presents itself as a challenging practice for 21st-century art institutions. Indeed, what is museum photography and its cultural value now that "we are all photographers"? In an era of the “massification” of images, how can museums strategically collect analogue and digital-born photography to create relevant and sustainable photographic collections for the future? What is the role of photography in the museum when online platforms and channels for the consumption of cultural production and collective social experiences question the function and relevance of the traditional museum?
Although photography as independent contemporary art was fully institutionalized in North America and Europe in the late twentieth century, its official accommodation in Southeast Asian Museums has been slower. Recent large-scale curatorial initiatives, such as "Amek Gambar: Peranakan and Photography" at the Peranakan Museum, Singapore (May 2018-February 2019), "Bayangan Timbul Tenggelam" at Ilham Gallery, Kuala Lumpur (May-July 2021), and "Living Pictures: Photography in Southeast Asia" at the National Gallery Singapore (Dec. 2022-Aug. 2023) – arguably the most comprehensive survey of photography practice in Southeast Asia to date – confirm the institutional legitimization of the medium in the region.
While the accommodation of photography in art institutions in Southeast Asia has rapidly unfolded in the past two decades, this development was not supported by a long-standing tradition. The collecting activities of historical photographs and contemporary photographic works are closely interconnected between museums, galleries, and private initiatives. Photography's accommodation as a historical artifact and contemporary art, as well as artists' responses to varying photographic cultures (particularly colonial photographic materials), takes place simultaneously in art institutions. This relatively new and vibrant dynamic creates a unique ecosystem of photography in Southeast Asia, in which accommodating photographs in art institutions does not merely signify the changing status of photography in art, culture, and society, nor is it a rebranding exercise of the art institution as a cultural and societal site. More importantly, it is the process of defining cultural and communal/national/regional identity. This panel seeks to explore issues pertinent to collecting photographic works in Southeast Asian institutions, not just in terms of collection building and management, conservation, digitization, documentation, and dissemination, but also in relation to the ways photography can be used as an accessible vehicle to consider wider social and political issues and processes, including identity, postcoloniality/decolonization, nation-ness and migration, economic and social injustice, and sustainability.