Introduction

The introduction to Mythologies, Identities and Territories of Photography: Forever//Now provides a creative turn to conventional introductory chapter writing by using a transcript of an email exchange by two delegates of the conference event on the 15th March 2019. The reciprocal communications of Hefar Gotoph and B.D. Delaire, both academics in the field, chart the period from their invitation to write a co-authored introduction, to the conclusion of their dialogue.

The nature of their conversations discuss the arising issues and contexts from the conference itself with more specific references to each contributors paper within the text, which interplays with the emerging social contexts of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic over a ten month period.

Hefar Gotoph is an independent writer and curator working and residing between the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania and Ukraine. He has worked for many years for a number of universities in Eastern Europe and specialises in inter-disciplinary research and creative practices that combine still and moving image with performance and improvised music.

He is founder and director of the East European Experimental Film Cooperative, and he has written widely for specialist film, photography and performance art journals.

B.D. Delaire is a writer, artist, and Professor of the Université du Luxembourg. They have taught both art history and philosophy across prominent institutions in Europe and America. Their work is informed by contemporary debates about art, politics and philosophy, embracing especially continental philosophy from Kant to the present, psychoanalytical theory, binaries of sceptic space and the Marxist intellectual tradition. They have published, amongst others, ‘After Theo Kerg: Mid Century Tactility of Form’ and ‘Herve Keenke, Knowledge and Truss Revisited’.

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