Jess Hurd, photographer and campaigning photojournalist

From Fine Art to Photojournalism. Listen to Jess Hurd talk about her life as a photojournalist, the risks and rewards of the job and how her passion for telling a story took her into this role.

Prof. Sarah Edge. 'The emergence of photojournalism as a genre'

Articulating Irish nationalism through photography in the 1840s and 1860s. In this presentation Sarah Edge examines how news photographs first began to communicate ideas to the viewer in relation to news events connected to the rise of Irish nationalism. She reveals how because the idea of a news photograph did not as yet exists other types of photographs were used such as portraiture or prison photographs. She demonstrates how such imagery began to give meaning to this emerging political movement.

Dr. Gail Baylis. 'The battle for hearts and minds.'

Irish evictions were big news in the late nineteenth-century with photographs of evictions, evidencing, it has been claimed, an early instance of photojournalism in Ireland. These photographs were affective in changing public opinion and their currency extended Ireland to North America, Australia, Britain and Europe. This talk looks at the response of Irish Special Branch to the news-value of such imagery and its attempt to create a counter-image through collecting photographs and by the adoption of secret photography. The types of photographs that Special Branch amassed and its production of photographs taken in secret will be considered in terms of how successful it was in changing policy in Ireland and in winning over public opinion.

Stephen Davison. 'A good GV, a tight box and a weepie.'

20 years of covering Northern Ireland as a photographer with Pacemaker Press International. In his illustrated talk, Davison reflects on the changes that have taken place in the industry over the past 20 years and how Pacemaker has coped with the challenges encountered along the way.

Patricia Holland. 'Photo-journalism in the age of the ubiquitous image.'

Patricia will look at the photographic centre spread regularly featured in the Guardian. She will consider the selection and presentation of images, riots and reportage next to landscape and cute animals, and discuss the purpose of the spread, the criteria for selection and how this accumulation of images relates to photojournalism and to online collections from Flickr through to the commercial picture agencies.