THE GLOSSARY
The glossary is an ongoing catalog of terms and concepts that appear across Photo Saloon’s offerings, conversations, and the image making process. Use these terms and resources as a point of reference. Meanings here are offered with care and intention, but open to interpretation and re-imagination.
Archival: How photography lives across time: inherited photographs, family documentation, re/discovered images.
Collaborative or Relational Practice: The image creation process shaped by shared space, dialogue, co creation, and/or collective witnessing of the humanity in one another.
Creative Lineage: Artists we return to for reference as companions in thinking, making, and seeing.
Critique: A shared process of engaging with artwork through observation and dialogue, meant to deepen understanding and expand possibility rather than determine value.
Documentary Photography: This definition has been widely discussed, debated, and there are different perspectives on what “documentary” means. Here are a few:
Photographic method used to document aspects of reality. Whether engaging in storytelling, activism, or reportage, artists take varied approaches to convey with the world that surrounds them. (MOCP)
Documentary photography is a style of photography that provides a straightforward and accurate representation of people, places, objects and events, and is often used in reportage. (Tate)
Ethics in Photography: An ongoing practice of care and accountability in image making, considering power dynamic, consent, representation, context, and the responsibilities photographers hold toward the people in front of the lens, audiences of the work, and the worlds their images circulate within.
Feminist Art: Feminist Art is defined by MoMA as “art that seeks to challenge the dominance of men in both art and society, to gain recognition and equality for women artists, and question assumptions about womanhood.” Photo Saloon expands on this definition to explicitly acknowledge the intersectional realities of race, class, gender identity, sexuality, and systems of power and privilege that shape who is seen, valued, and historically included in art.
Found Photographs: Photographs discovered outside of their original context that can open dialogue about meaning, memory, and archive.
Identity as Creative Practice: Explorations of selfhood, where photography becomes a site for knowing the self, seeking understanding of each other, and gaining knowledge about where we come from.
Photo Book: Objects of care, containers for intimacy, sequencing, and sustained ways of looking outside of the digital world.
Photography as Resistance: Image making that disrupts dominant narratives, challenges normative frameworks, and asserts other ways of seeing and being.
Socially Engaged Photography: An approach to image making that centers ethics, relationship, and collaboration. Created using a participatory approach, SEP deeply considers the social impact of images, rather than just their content.