In a globalised world riven by societal fractures, what kinds of visual communication strategies will help to bridge the gaps and move society forward? Given the changes in societal dynamics and the transformations in the ways that images are produced and received, particularly in a digital environment, an unremitting reliance on 20th-century forms is insufficient and misleading. How do we shift the paradigm in ways that are coherent and useful, while cognizant of the enormous potentials of digital media to be both helpful and destructive? What is the role of the professional or serious amateur in all of this? How can both the subject and the reader become more collaborative with the photographer in this process? How can photography be thought of as more of a proactive medium working to prevent or minimise disaster rather than a reactive one waiting for disasters to occur? How does the increasing technical ability to both composite and synthesise the recording media of photography, video and sound potentially disrupt communications and threaten democracies, and are there any useful responses? Finally, where are we at this moment in our uses of visual media and where do we want to go?
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