The University of Salford has announced that it will host a major global conference on photography next September.

It is organised by the US-based publisher Common Ground Research Network, which runs 24 annual conferences on key academic subjects across the world. Hundreds of academics are expected to attend the event in Salford.

Dr Mark Hall, Conference Chair and Programme Leader for MA & BA Photography, said: “It is significant that The University of Salford has been chosen to host a global conference about the role of the image in society.

“Not only will this raise the visibility of our photography courses here at Salford but it will hopefully start to push forward the dialogue amongst academics and photographers around being at the cutting edge of artificial intelligence’s relationship with contemporary photography.”

Dr Hall added that the conference will act as a platform to discuss the way language is used to describe photography, how it is impacting the photography profession and the strong relationship it bares to lighting.

The Sixteenth International Conference of the Image will take place at the New Adelphi Theatre on the university’s Peel Park campus on Thursday 4 and Friday 5 September 2025.

The Salford conference has also announced a call for research addressing the following themes to be discussed at the event – Shifting Perspectives and The Evolving Dynamics of Light, Language and Images.

On the Call for Papers, Dr Hall said: “It is right to talk about the business of language around photography. As a society, we don’t talk about photos anymore, we talk about assets and photographers are commissioned to produce a range of assets.

“These assets are photographs but the language we use about them places them in a spreadsheet form, stripping them of their providence and original value.”

The conference was previously held in Manchester at Manchester Metropolitan University in September 2019 and its 15th iteration will be hosted by Interamerican Open University in Buenos Aires, Argentina this October.

Find out more about the photography conference here.

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