Seminar: Photography, Imagination and the Speculative

• Seminar focusing on Surrealist practices in photography, as well as many more related themes
• The seminar is accompanied by an exhibition curated by Ernst van Alphen, on view at Buro Onrust

What: Seminar
Where: Buro Onrust, Planciusstraat 7, 1013 MD Amsterdam
When: Wednesday 25 November 2026, 11:00–16:00 hrs
Language: English
Admission: €15,– (regular), €7,- (students); ticket link TBA. Please register via: emily@valiz.nl

Photography has long held the status of being an objective medium, one that documents the world most faithfully. Yet there are many photographic practices that pursue something different and demonstrate other ambitions: rather than documenting, they re-enchant the world. This seminar focuses on those practices.

The occasion of this programme is the publication of Ernst van Alphen’s new book Re-Enchanting Photography: Contemporary Art and Surrealism (Valiz, 2026). The seminar explores the contents of the book, as well as many topics that broaden the topic of Surrealism. To accompany the release of the book, Ernst van Alphen has curated the eponymous exhibition at Buro Onrust, featuring the works of Amie Dicke, Geert Goiris, Paul Kooiker, Juul Kraijer and Viviane Sassen. The exhibition will be on view during the seminar.

Study materials in preparation of the seminar are provided by Valiz.

10:30–11:00 Doors open
11:00–11:15 Welcome by Valiz
11:15–12:00 Ernst van Alphen (30-minute lecture + 15-minute discussion)
12:00–12:45 Sophie Berrebi (30-minute lecture + 15-minute discussion)
12:45–13:45 Lunch break (lunch is provided by Buro Onrust & Valiz)
13:45–14:30 Frits Gierstberg (30-minute presentation + 15-minute discussion)
14:30–15:15 Ali Shobeiri (30-minute presentation + 15-minute discussion)
15:15–16:00 Roundtable discussion, including 15 minutes for questions

About the speakers:

Ernst van Alphen is Professor Emeritus of Literary Studies at Leiden University. His books bridge art and literature, offering in-depth analyses and introducing fresh perspectives across wide-ranging topics. His work focuses on photography and visual culture, the trauma of the Holocaust, the archive as a device of power and as a political strategy, and gender. His publications include: Trauma and Affect: (Mis)Understanding Pain in Art and Culture (Valiz, 2026), Seven Logics of Sculpture: Encountering Objects Through the Senses (Valiz, 2023), Productive Archiving: Artistic Strategies, Future Memories, Fluid Identities (ed., Valiz, 2023), Shame! and Masculinity (ed., Valiz, 2021), Failed Images: Photography and Its Counter-Practices (Valiz, 2018).

Sophie Berrebi is a writer, art historian and occasional curator. Her writing has appeared in frieze, Afterall, Metropolis M, and Art and Research, among other publications. She received her PhD from the Courtauld Insitute of Art, University of London in 2003, and she is based at the University of Amsterdam where she teaches the history and theory of photography and contemporary art. She is a member of ASCA, the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. She is the author of The Shape of Evidence: Contemporary Art and the Document (Valiz, 2015).

Frits Gierstberg is an art historian, curator, critic, and Extraordinary Professor of Photography at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. Gierstberg has curated numerous exhibitions of contemporary photography, including ‘Wasteland: Landscape from now on’ (1992), ‘Human Conditions: Intimate Portraits’ (Montreal, 1999), ‘Still/Moving: Contemporary Photography, Film and Video from the Netherlands’ (Kyoto, 2000), ‘Surface: Contemporary Photography, Video and Painting from Japan’ (2001), and ‘Experience: The Media Rat Race, Foto Biennale Rotterdam V’ (2003). He publishes regularly on international photography in the Netherlands and abroad and is also (co-)editor of a number of books about photography and visual culture, among which are The Image Society: Essays on Visual Culture (NAi Publishers, 2002) and Documentary Now! Contemporary Strategies in Photography, Film and the Visual Arts (NAi Publishers, 2005).

Ali Shobeiri is an Assistant Professor of Photography and Visual Culture at Leiden University. He is the author of Place: Towards a Geophilosophy of Photography (Leiden University Press, 2021) and co-editor of Oikography: Homemaking Through Photography (Leiden University Press, 2025), Virtual Photography: Artificial Intelligence, In-game, and Extended Reality (transcript, 2024), Psychosomatic Imagery: Photographic Reflections on Mental Disorders (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), and Animation and Memory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). His forthcoming books are Aquatic Visualities: Buoyancy, Floating, Sinking (co-authored), Video Games & Memory (edited), and Measures of Intensity in Photography (co-edited).