Geoffrey Batchen on vernacular photography and appreciating the banal

In this episode, we have the great pleasure to meet with Professor Geoffrey Batchen, an expert in the history of photography. He has taught in his native Australia, the United States, and currently holds a position at Oxford in the UK as a professor of the history of art. He has curated exhibitions in renowned institutions such as the ICP in New York, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, and the Izu Photo Museum in Shizuoka, Japan.Geoffrey is one of the popularisers of the term Vernacular Photography through his extensive writing and involvement in the field. We recorded this conversation during a conference on Vernacular Photography organised by the Eidolon Centre in Budapest.Geoffrey talks about how to look at images, emphasising that there is no such thing as banal, and delves into the significance of smiles in photographs. He also touches on the question of where Vernacular fits in our historical narrative and discusses the dangers of assigning financial value to everyday images.Read more about Geoffrey Batchen's work.Geoffrey Batchen: Forget Me Not: Photography & RemembranceNegative/Positive A History of Photography bookApparitions: Photography and Dissemination bookVernacular photographies essayFurther links:Eidolon Center BudapestFortpan Archive BudapestMalick SidibéFollow us on Instagram:@Vernacular Social Club@Lukas BirkBecome a Vernacular Social Club member