Images, Objects, and Their Afterlives with Professor Annebella Pollen
Selvedge readers are warmly invited to an illuminating lecture by Professor Annebella Pollen, a cultural historian renowned for her expertise in design, craft, dress, and photography. This inaugural lecture, titled Images, Objects and their Afterlives, will take place at the Sallis Benney Theatre in Brighton on Wednesday, 5 March 2025, and promises a compelling exploration of visual and material culture.
Professor Pollen’s work poses thought-provoking questions: What stories can historic images and objects tell about the past? When preserved in personal collections or institutional archives, what futures are they meant to serve? And what happens when those narratives fade or are forgotten?
For over two decades, Professor Pollen has reinterpreted undervalued collections, shining a light on visual and material culture often relegated to the margins. Her research spans diverse realms, from photographs salvaged during house clearances to the visual archives of utopian movements. Through this work, she examines what societies choose to preserve, what they discard, and how these decisions reveal intersecting dynamics of value, memory, and power.
Her fascination with textiles and photography, two seemingly distinct disciplines, has been central to much of her research. In the panel discussion Picturing Fabrics: Textile and the Photographic Image, she explored how these mediums intersect as surfaces of aesthetic and cultural expression. Her own experiences collecting embroidered flamenco postcards further illustrate this connection. Encountered in Catholic bookshops and on trips to Spain, these postcards blended devotional and decorative elements, with photographic images enhanced by stitched bodices and frilled skirts. Years later, some of her collection featured in Brighton’s Keepers exhibition.
Professor Pollen’s interdisciplinary approach, reflected in works such as Mass Photography: Collective Histories of Everyday Life and Dress History: New Directions in Theory and Practice, underscores her ability to uncover the intricate relationships between textiles, photography, and memory.
For those fascinated by the interplay of these themes, this lecture offers an exceptional opportunity to engage with a leading thinker in the field.
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Event Details:
Date: Wednesday, 5 March 2025
Time: 6:30 PM
Location: Sallis Benney Theatre, University of Brighton, 58-67 Grand Parade, Brighton, BN2 0JY
Admission: Free (registration required)
To attend, please register online no later than 48 hours before the event:
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Image credits:
Annebella Pollen / Brighton University