I have been researching and reading John Berger’s Ways of Seeing , John Fontcuberta’s Post Photography and Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Whats the relevance into my ARP and Pedagogy?

Berger: Seeing is structured by power

Images aren’t neutral; they naturalise class, gender, coloniality ownership, desire.

Key question: Who benefits from this way of seeing?

1. Fontcuberta: Photography is now an environment
2. Freire: Liberation happens through dialogue + practice
3. Students are co-investigators; knowledge is made collectively; action follows reflection.
4. What can we do differently together, starting now?

Workshop Activity Information Sheet

Smartphone Workshop – 3/12/2025

With the democratisation of photography through the smartphone, visual literacy is now the new normal.

But is it enough, or do we need to disrupt our visual recall by making photographs with an unorthodox but disciplined practice using the Smartphones Zoom function.

Can this allow us to see with clarity?

If so, how does this affect our sense vision and ultimately how we approach commissions and personal practice.

In this workshop, I want you to only make photographs using the zoom function, no postproduction cropping or zoom is allowed.

You can make the photographs around the confines of the building of the university.

Portraits can be made but only with the consent of the individuals you wish to photograph.

Be bold in the ideas of failure. What does this statement mean?

In essence it is about a discipline of recognising what you expect takes a good photograph and then not making it and walking away from that moment.

It is about embracing the unknown quality of the experimental and challenging your taught, learnt and influenced process.

How can you look beyond the ordinary, boring sometimes mundane situations around us.

It is these moments that we can see something special.

We are going to elevate the photographs we make in this session in the various areas of the university whether that’s in the studio or in the buildings/ classrooms / canteen.

You will be working individually

You will have 2.5 hours for the first part of the brief to make the photographs and deliver via we transfer, WhatsApp, text message or email.

After lunch we will meet again and discuss the process and disseminate your images.

You will be given a series of questions to answer about your experience and thoughts of this exercise.

Now that phones alter our photos without us knowing, how do we know what’s real?

Isabel Brooks

“The so-called “raw” photos that lack processing had subtle, muted colours, softer edges , a little grainy while the processed photos were gorgeous and crisp like the inside of a marble. Why were they so different?

The answer to this, like everything else these days, is machine learning, used by virtually every major smartphone-maker to enhance the photos taken with their cameras. 

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/23/smartphones-photos-filters-pictures-software

What happens if you use an app that doesnt use the AI of Smartphone Camera

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/how-i-fell-back-in-love-with-iphone-photography

As an Intervention to start the process of the ARP, I organised a remote workshop.This was both out of necessity in terms of logistics and allowing the students to be able to make choices on pre shot images they would choose to intervene using the crop function and postproduction on both their smartphone or laptops using software such as Photoshop. They were set a simple task which would not be time consuming and only require them to choose a preshot image with the caveat – The image must not have been made using the Zoom and that it was what they felt was indicative of their practice. In essence their personal style or what they thought was their personal style.

It is important to stress that the students participating are undergraduates in their second and final years. Below are the images that were sent to me via their devices both smartphone and laptops. They were sent using email and messaging services.

Concern → Intervention → Evidence → Reflection → Pedagogic change

I wanted the students who agreed to participate in the research to think about the possibilities of intervention on images they has taken previously as part of their BA Photography Pathways. The caveat was that the images must have been taken on their smartphone and that they were not using the zoom function of the camera when they made their images.

Interventions in photographic practice are a norm especially in regards to Fine Art Practice. As my role on MA Commercial Photography we have a brief specifically tailored and set to our students, however the role of Smartphone interventions has never been explored. Examples of artists such as John Stezaker, Simryn Gill and Julie Cockburn. However I wanted the students to think about what the smartphone does in regards to the technical and aesthetic aspects of images and what an retrospective intervention on their images happens using a post production in photoshop to achieve a retrospective “zoom”.

Digital Zoom, Interpolation, Surveillance Optics & Social-Media Aesthetics

Information Sheet Handout to Participants ( See attached also)

1. Digital Zoom: What It Really Does

Digital zoom is not the same as optical zoom.

• Optical zoom uses the lens to bring the subject physically closer.
• Digital zoom simply crops the image and enlarges it, meaning the camera must invent new pixels to fill the gaps.
  As you zoom in, you’re not “seeing more”, you’re seeing an amplified crop.

Digital zoom reveals how smartphones simulate photographic clarity rather than truly capture it. Every zoomed image becomes a negotiation between what was there and what the software imagines.

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2. Interpolation: Inventing Missing Information

Interpolation is the computational process that guesses what the missing pixels should look like.

Common systems include:

• Nearest Neighbour: simple, blocky, pixelated
• Bilinear / Bicubic: smooth but smeared
• AI Super-Resolution: algorithms infer texture using training data

This matters because the more interpolation is used, the less the image reflects the original scene. Instead, it becomes a data-driven reconstruction, raising questions about truth, fiction, and photographic representation.

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3. Surveillance Optics: Zoom as Power

Zoom has strong ties to surveillance technologies, CCTV, drone cameras, police body cams, satellite imaging.
These systems use zoom not for aesthetics but for control, distance, and scrutiny.

Three key ideas:

• Distance: The viewer remains safely detached from the subject.
• Power: The person operating the camera has more agency than the person being watched.
• The Forensic Gaze: Subjects are analysed for clues, guilt, or deviance.

When students replicate zoom in everyday smartphone photography, they echo a visual vocabulary shaped by policing, investigation, and monitoring even unintentionally.

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4. Social-Media Aesthetics: How Platforms Shape Images

Smartphones don’t just capture images they optimise them for the “feed.”
Algorithms and image pipelines favour:

• Hyper-sharpening
• Smoothing of skin
• Strong colours and contrast
• High dynamic range
• Face-prioritisation
• “Clean” noise-free look

This creates a new aesthetic:

• Part aspirational lifestyle
• Part advertising gloss
• Part AI-enhanced simulation

As a result, users learn to recognise and reproduce TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat’s visual styles. The camera becomes less a neutral device and a more platform-aligned aesthetic

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Why These Ideas Matter in Photography Education

Smartphones have democratised image making but also standardised it.
Studying digital zoom, interpolation, and surveillance optics helps students:

• Recognise mediation rather than assume transparency
• Question how “truth” is constructed in digital images
• Understand how power operates in visual culture
• Critically analyse the aesthetics pushed by platforms
• See photography as a socio-technical process, not just a technical one

These concepts encourage a critical visual literacy that goes beyond “taking better photos” and moves toward understanding how images shape (and distort) the world we see.

This is the consent form for the participants for the workshop activity.

I have attached both my ARP and Ethics Form to this post.

You can read the plan below

How can smartphone zoom photography disrupt approaches to visual literacy in photography education to enhance critical thinking during a time of social-media-driven image production? 

1. Context and Rationale 

Smartphone cameras have become the default mode of image creation for students. The zoom function—often dismissed as low quality or amateurish is deeply entangled with social media aesthetics, digital interpolation, and algorithmic image shaping. Traditional photography education rarely engages with zoom as a valid conceptual tool. 

This project investigates how smartphone zoom photography can disrupt conventional photographic norms and enhance critical thinking by foregrounding mediation, distortion, and the politics of looking. 

2. Research Question 

Primary question: 
 

How can smartphone zoom photography disrupt approaches to visual literacy in photography education to enhance critical thinking? 

Sub-questions: 

1. What assumptions do students hold about zoom and image quality? 

2. How does intentional use of zoom change their approach to visual analysis? 

3. What critical conversations emerge when zoom is treated as a conceptual tool? 

4. How does this method affect their ability to critique images in the age of platform culture? 

3. Theoretical Framework 

Berger, J. (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin.

Mirzoeff, N. (2015) How to See the World. London: Pelican.

Fontcuberta, J. (2014) The Post-Photography Era. Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili.
(Note: English edition sometimes published as Pandora’s Camera.)

Couldry, N. and Hepp, A. (2017) The Mediated Construction of Reality. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Manovich, L. (2020) Cultural Analytics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
(for algorithms, platform aesthetics)

Rubinstein, D. and Sluis, K. (2008) ‘A Life More Photographic’, Photographies, 1(1), pp. 9–28.
(for democratisation of photography, everyday devices)

Freire, P. (1970) Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.
(for experimental/critical pedagogy

4. Methodology (Action Research) 

Diagnose 

Short task: students take two images normal and maximum zoom followed by reflection. 
Data: notes, discussions, initial images. 

Plan 

Design workshop integrating zoom based exercises, mini-lecture, critical prompts. 

Action 

Deliver workshop: zoom experiments, uploads to shared board, group critique. 

Evidence Collection 

Collect images, reflections, discussions, surveys. 

Evaluation 

Analyse changes in student language, conceptual awareness, criticality. 

Reflection 

Refine exercises, identify future directions, integrate into curriculum. 

5. Ethics 

Voluntary participation, anonymised data, no social-media scraping, safe critique environment. 

6. Expected Outcomes 

• Increased student awareness of digital mediation 

• Enhanced critical thinking in image analysis 

• Expanded understanding of photographic materiality 

• More inclusive and contemporary pedagogy 

A repeatable teaching model After much thought I reassessed whether it would be feasible to include Autoethnography into the plan. Maybe in the future if I develop a model for using this ARP into my teaching practice it can become incorporated.

Notes on ARP

Sitting in the lectures regarding the ARP brought about a new way of thinking about the ways to approach teaching within contemporary photographic practice and the possibilities of incorporating a way of thinking about image making. Whilst I understand the need for a disciplined approach to delivery of the curriculum, I find that sometimes this approach limits the students as they may feel it too rigorous , a point A to Z to final outcomes. I also feel that students who haven’t been exposed to what is deemed liberal arts can find themselves shoe horned into a ‘system” of expectation of the success model.

What if that can be challenged ? What if the dialogue between educator and student can become a freer discourse. A learning curve for the educator to respond understanding cultural differences and nuances thorough the system and at hand equipment for students to imagine possibilities without the constraints of expenses such as analogue film at the very least in the formation towards to making work.

Most importantly how do we as educators give the confidence to students to break away from expected norms of ‘good images” to more pertinent images for the 21st century.

The difficulties however are also within the constraints of the art / commerce model of content creation within the industry.

Is this a matter of expectation from both the artist and the client ?

How to ‘survive” in an enviroment that is rapidly changing?

I have been thinking alot about Poetry and Photography recently. My first book’s title ” Lost in the Wilderness ” https://www.ft.com/content/39ae60bc-ca03-11e5-be0b-b7ece4e953a0 came about from an unfinished poem. The poem was a consequence of trying to come to terms with the internal battles that in the end I realise inform my practice. I am thinking if its possible to include this within the Action Research Plan.

Tod Papageorge’s articulates this relationship between photography and poetry is made in his introduction to Garry Winogrand’s book, Public Relations (1977):

A photograph is just a picture – or, as Winogrand would have it, “the illusion of a literal description of a piece of time and space.” It is as wanton a fiction as any description; but it is also, of course, a particularly convincing one because it so specifically locates and describes what it shows. As a poet knows that the words he chooses for his poem will, by their particular combination, resonate with a power that is the gift of language itself, so a photographer has at his disposal a system of visual indication that, even without his conscious deliberation, will describe the world with a unique, mimetic energy.

Auduen’s observation that “it is both the glory and the shame of poetry that its medium is not its private property, that a poet cannot invent his words,” could also be said of the photographer’s relation to the things of the physical world: that he cannot invent them. By being fictions and, at the same moment, returning their subjects to us with a compelling fidelity, both photographs and poems work with the same surprise. Atget’s beech trees will never shade us, any more than Frost’s birches will, but both have been given a “local habitation and a name,” both mediate between our experience and our sense of the-world-as-it-apparently-is, and both strike us an if they were simultaneously remembrances and revelations

Winogrand, G. & Papageorge, T. (1977) Public Relations. New York: Museum of Modern Art.

“Through my camera I see the world differently; it limits, crops, selects and guides seeing.”

Suominen, A. (2003) Writing with Photographs, Re-Constructing Self: An Arts-Based Autoethnographic Inquiry. MA thesis. The Ohio State University.

“If we could learn new ways of using our cameras we could start by telling our own stories in different ways. Initially we could use the camera for a dialogue with ourselves, as in photo therapy, to de-censorize ourselves, or as a type of visual diary-writing. Once we feel it is safe to proceed we can share our ‘new’ stories with allies, and we can begin to re-imag(in)e who we are, both visually and verbally. If we were encouraged to do this as children, who knows what we might begin to make of the world by the time we became adults? (Spence, 1988, p. 214).”

Spence, J. (1988) Putting Myself in the Picture: A Political, Personal and Photographic Autobiography. Real Comet Press / Camden Press, London/Seattle.

Autoethnography acknowledges that teaching and research are never neutral, and that positionality, social background, and racialised experience shape pedagogical encounters. Through written narrative, reflective journaling, and the creation of iPhone zoom images, I will generate a parallel body of material that both documents and interrogates my own relationship to visual literacy, photographic conventions, and inclusivity. These personal creative responses will be analysed in dialogue with student work, opening up resonances and tensions between individual and collective experience.

By combining action research and creative autoethnography, the project aims not only to measure the inclusivity of the intervention but also to expose the cultural and personal frames through which it is conceived and enacted. This hybrid methodology acknowledges that inclusive pedagogy requires both practical change in teaching practice and critical self-reflection on the part of the educator.

Memoire Temporelle, Photographs by Kalpesh Lathigra

I have been questioning my own creative output as a Practioner both as an Artist and Photographer. It feels like “Groundhog Day ” and I am on autopilot when it comes to commissions or other wise.There are regular conversations around the homogeneous stream of content within the photographic community. This had led me to think how can I disrupt my practice to re wire my brain so I can be pushing the notions of my own Visual Literary by challenging myself. Using a discipline modus operandi of the zoom function on my smartphone and the standard is not allowed. It has given me a new way of looking with intent when I use a standard camera.

I am a Senior Lecturer on MA Commercial Photography at LCC/UAL, my regular mantra to both my cohort and the wider photography students on the different pathways has always been about “Authorship ” – one own vision, style , photographs that resonate but have your own “magic dust ” that is unique.

I have also been thinking about Inclusivity and Accessibility of the Smart Phone that can break down barriers to photographic education. Students marginalised backgrounds may feel alienated or undervalued. Expensive technical gear reinforces class/racial exclusion.

Draft ARP Proposal #1

This Action Research Project will investigate how smartphone zoom photography can be used as an inclusive pedagogical tool to challenge dominant assumptions of visual literacy within photography education. In many teaching contexts, notions of “good” photographic practice are bound up with access to expensive equipment, technical mastery, and Eurocentric aesthetic values. These conventions can marginalise students from racially and socially diverse backgrounds, reinforcing hierarchies of cultural capital and limiting whose perspectives are legitimised in the classroom. By introducing the iPhone’s zoom function , which is typically associated with everyday, vernacular use rather than professional image-making. This project seeks to disrupt those hierarchies and explore how alternative literacies of seeing and making can emerge.

The intervention will take the form of a workshop in which students produce images exclusively with smartphone zoom. They will be invited to respond to prompts that reflect their lived experience or cultural reference points, followed by a group discussion about what these images reveal about visibility, distortion, framing, and power. Data will be gathered through student reflections, collected images (with consent), and a reflective journal documenting the process. Ethical considerations will ensure students retain agency over their contributions and can choose how their work is represented in reporting.

The project asks: How can smartphone zoom photography foster more socially and racially inclusive approaches to visual literacy, and in what ways does it challenge dominant aesthetic norms in photography education? Through analysis of images and student responses, the project aims to highlight whether low-tech, widely accessible practices can create more equitable participation, broaden the frames of reference for visual literacy, and inform more inclusive approaches to teaching photography at UAL and beyond.

Photographs by Kalpesh Lathigra / Examples of my practice using SmartPhone Zoom Function only

IP Unit: Reflective Report

Inclusive Pedagogy in Photography Education

Introduction

I am an artist, photographer and educator, these roles I play are not mutually exclusive. I am reminded of the Venn diagram from my secondary school education and that of my interview to join the university. I spoke of the need to not “silo” the photography pathways and I feel this applies to pedagogical practices to foster inclusivity, community and address the challenges faced by students.

Photography is often described as a universal language, but this framing risks flattening the political and cultural histories embedded within the image. The photographic canon particularly within Western art education, continues to marginalise non-Western voices, aesthetics, and philosophies. In my role as an arts educator within a postgraduate photography programme, I have witnessed students arrive with a deeply internalised belief in Western superiority in photography who measure themselves against Euro-American benchmarks while remaining either unaware of alternative visual traditions or choose what is seen as the model route to success in a competitive industry.

This reflective report outlines the rationale, execution, and outcomes of an interventionist workshop titled “A Diverse Language.” It is rooted in an inclusive and decolonial pedagogy, the workshop seeks to redress the imbalance of references and create cross-cultural, collaborative environments that challenge students to see and think differently. Drawing from contemporary theory, global photographic practices, and embodied exercises, this report positions inclusive learning as a pedagogical, aesthetic, and political imperative.

Context and Problem Identification

The MA Photography cohort I work with is diverse in nationality and cultural background, yet the classroom discussions remain tethered to a Western frame of reference especially within Commercial photography. Contemporary photographers and artists such Cindy Sherman, Annie Leibovitz, Alec Soth, Nick Knight, Tim Walker and Wolfgang Tillmans dominate conversations, while artists from India, Bangladesh, Morocco, China, Ghana, Cameroon, Mali or Nigeria are seldom mentioned. The visual language absorbed and reproduced by students is often rooted in formalist, Eurocentric conventions of “good photography.” Even when photographers of colour are mentioned they fit what is seen as palatable to the western gaze and stories that only beautify rather than have a deeper conversation, keeping the status quo of the good photograph.There is the compounded affect of industry that promotes the ideas of diversity but gatekeepers and cliques of practitioners develop the model of the “closed shop” only enabling those who fit their criteria. We can see this in the norms of social media practices on platforms such as Instagram where those in the exclusive club follow each other and continue to keep the doors closed and the ceilings high at the same time are performative in their actions for meaningful change.

Students also gravitate toward their own cultural and linguistic groups, further limiting exchange. Rather than engaging with the unfamiliar, there is a tendency to stay within the safe boundaries of known experience and reference. This insularity, both aesthetic and social, urgently calls for an intervention that would unsettle the hierarchical gaze and promote inclusive learning as well promote dialogue and engage in conversations outside of the course.

Pedagogical Approach

The workshop draws from Bell Hooks’ theory of education as “the practice of freedom” and Paulo Freire’s concept of co-created knowledge through dialogue. It is also informed by Ariella Azoulay’s notion of photography as a civic encounter (2018) where meaning and ethics emerge relationally rather than authorially. These philosophies are aligned with Hong (2025), who critiques how aesthetic schemas such as the reclining female nude persist in modern Chinese photography under colonial influence, highlighting how the legacy of Western aesthetics operates even within non-Western contexts.

To dismantle these entangled legacies, the workshop employs a participatory, performative and decolonial pedagogy. Students are not just taught about diversity; they are made to experience it through embodied, collaborative practice. In Bhagat, D. and O’Neill, P. (2011), I summarise that any tangible change in inclusive practice requires a shift within pedogogy, one that can recognise and respond to the diversity within photography across the world. The notion that by enabling entry to students is not a measure of or equate to a supportive or equitable learning environment.

This intervention I hope can address this and provide a safe space where students can collaborate, exchange knowledge, gain self-confidence and importantly bring new voices to the fore and celebrate those that have been sidelined.

Workshop Design: “A Diverse Language”

The workshop is structured into five distinct yet interlinked stages:

1. Framing the Issue:

Students are introduced to the workshop through a discussion that critically unpacks the idea of photography as a neutral or universal language. We view resources such as Renee Mussai’s “Black Portraiture” (YouTube, 2022), alongside excerpts from A Window Suddenly Opens, a groundbreaking exhibition on Chinese photography (Chiu & Johnson, 2023). These discussions help reframe photography not as a tool of mastery, but as a site of resistance, memory, and multiplicity. We incorporate readings from Moumni (2024) on fashion photography in postcolonial Morocco, who argues for the reconstruction of identity through the lens and critiques the objectifying gaze embedded in mainstream fashion narratives.

2. Cross-Cultural Buddy System:

Students are paired across gender, nationality, and MA pathways into “buddies.” Each pair is tasked with sharing a deeply personal insight something meaningful, possibly hidden from their lives. This may begin as a voice message, WhatsApp text, or even a drawing. The task is not only to reveal, but to listen, interpret, and carry someone else’s story into visual form.

This act echoes Vygotsky’s social constructivist model, where knowledge is created through interaction. Here, the act of photographing becomes relational rather than representational.

3. The Disruption Task:

Each group receives 10 sheets of Polaroid instant film and a camera. Their brief: create photographs that reflect or reinterpret their buddy’s insight, while deliberately challenging dominant aesthetic conventions. The goal is to produce images that feel “boring,” “mundane,” or “formally wrong” in order to interrogate what students unconsciously consider “good photography.”

As Hong (2025) suggests, unlearning aesthetic expectations is a first step toward uncovering the colonial scaffolding beneath photographic traditions.

Students use every day spaces classrooms, stairwells, the canteen to stage their images. The intention is to elevate the ordinary, to look beyond spectacle, and to find poetic potential in the overlooked.

4. Nonlinear Exhibition:

After developing the Polaroids, students are required to give their photographs to another group. The receiving group must curate a spontaneous wall installation using only unfamiliar images. This relinquishing of authorship challenges individualistic models of creativity and encourages a more fluid, interpretive engagement with the image.

The temporary exhibition resists chronology, narrative coherence, and ownership. It is a living archive of misinterpretation, collaboration, and shared meaning.

5. Reflection and Critique:

In a closing roundtable, each group reflects on what they thought the images they exhibited meant, and the original makers reveal their intentions. This leads to a rich discussion about visual misrecognition, positionality, and how meaning can shift in transit.

Inclusive Learning Through Global References

Central to the success of the workshop is the incorporation of global and non-Western references, which helped students break out of the narrow confines of the Euro-American canon. Students engaged with:

• African photographers such as Zanele Muholi , James Barnor, Lindokhule Sobekwa, Malick Sidibé whose work blends identity, community, and resistance.
• African American Photographers such as Zora Murff , Deana Lawson, Widen Cadet, Rahim Fortune
• Indian photographers like Dayanita Singh ,Gauri Gill , Sohrab Hura, who offer nuanced readings of personal and political histories through portraiture and architectural space.
• Asian practitioners including Hiroshi Sugimoto , Daido Moriyama ,Ren Hang , Kathy Ann Lim whose practices disrupt temporality and formal conventions.
• Tamvi Mishra’s curatorial work in India and Southeast Asia, and Veerangana Solanki’s efforts to challenge patriarchal framing in art and image-making.

This diverse spectrum of work creates a new visual vocabulary for students. 

Reflections on Impact

The workshop I hope can have profound effects on both the classroom atmosphere and individual student practice. I want students to be “freed” from the pressure to conform to dominant visual styles and work with someone outside their cultural or language group before.

By reframing photography as a collaborative, interpretive, and political act, students began to recognise their own complicity in reproducing hegemonic standards and their power to subvert them.

The images produced, though technically imperfect, can be deeply affecting. A still life of leftover rice on a canteen table, a unused computer, the pencil on a ledge, a disruptive portrait carry more weight than a well-lit studio photograph because of the story behind it. The formal “failure” became a narrative success.

Challenges and Next Steps

It is important note that my positionality as a South Asian male who has been born in the United Kingdom. My own photographic education has undoubtedly been influenced by the dominant culture of the west which brings bias. It is the water I have drunk that has both nourished and diminished me in part.

My experience as a professional photographer has led me to prioritize a path that has conformed to the narratives in play in the industry. The glass ceilings and socio-economic consequences have their part in these decisions.

It is vital that I as an educator and participant in the wider industry make more interventions to not only highlight but to make meaningful change by leading by example not only to the students but within the institution of education and my colleagues.

Some students can struggle with the ambiguity of the brief. Others may find the personal-sharing aspect emotionally challenging. These experiences highlight the need for emotional scaffolding in pedagogical design future iterations of the workshop will include content warnings, support prompts, and opt-out alternatives.

Additionally, the current assessment model focused on individual portfolios and critical writing does not easily accommodate collective, process-driven outcomes. Moving forward, I plan to introduce alternative forms of assessment that reward collaboration, interpretation, and critical self-reflection. I have run a basic version of this workshop and my plan now is to incorporate this workshop moving forward in the new academic year consulting with my colleagues on the best way forward in the first term where I feel the impact can at its most beneficial.

Conclusion

“A Diverse Language” is more than a workshop; it is an evolving intervention into the structures of knowledge, authorship, and aesthetic power within photography education. By using global references, fostering intercultural collaboration, and embracing disruption, the workshop cultivates a pedagogy that is both inclusive and radical.

Photography is not just about what we see, but about how and with whom we choose to look. By unsettling the dominant gaze, we can begin to build new visual languages that are as plural, porous, and poetic as the communities we serve.

References

• Hong, F. (2025). The coloniality beneath the aesthetics: A study on the reclining female schema in modern Chinese photography. Visual Studies, pp.1–14.
• Moumni, O. (2024). Rethinking fashion photography: Reconstructing identities, decolonising bodies and resistance in postcolonial Morocco. Visual Studies, pp.1–13.
• The Artling. (2019). Top 13 Famous Asian Photographers You Need To Know. [online] Available at: https://theartling.com/en/artzine/famous-asian-photographers/ [Accessed 24 Jun. 2025].
• Gautami. (2022). 10 Iconic Indian Photographers. [online] India Art Fair. Available at: https://indiaartfair.in/10-iconic-indian-photographers [Accessed 24 Jun. 2025].
• Tate. (n.d.). Get to know 8 photographers who explore Africa’s diverse cultures and histories. [online] Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/photography/get-to-know-8-photographers-who-explore-africas-diverse-cultures-and-histories.
• Mussai, R. (2022). Black Portraiture: Activating Histories. [YouTube]. Autograph ABP.
• Mishra, T. (2024). Any Answers? [1854 Photography]. Available at: https://www.1854.photography/2024/02/curator-tanvi-mishra-any-answers-arles/
• Solanki, V. (2024). On Gender and the Image. [YouTube]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmtYgHx098E
• Chiu, M. & Johnson, B. (2023). A Window Suddenly Opens: Contemporary Photography in China. Hirshhorn Museum.
• Ariella Azoulay – The Civil Contract of Photography (2018) , Princeton University Press
• Bhagat, D. and O’Neill, P. (2011) Inclusive practices, inclusive pedagogies: learning from widening participation research in art and design higher education. Croydon: CHEAD.