- Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media
About me
Dr. Paula Gortázar is a researcher, writer and lecturer. After completing a double degree in Law and Economics, followed by an MA in Photographic Studies, she obtained a fully-funded Doctoral Scholarship to study a PhD at the University of Westminster, which she completed in 2018. Her research practice investigates recent developments in AI systems and extended reality technologies and how these are exponentially changing the possibilities in which visual content might be created and used within and beyond virtual space.
Paula is a founding member of the Expanded Photography Research Group at the University of Westminster. Her work has been published in several academic journals, including Photography and Culture, Third Text and Photographies, and presented at multiple international conferences worldwide. Her artistic practice has been widely exhibited in Canada, the USA, Germany, the UK and Spain, including venues like The Photographers’ Gallery, and published in different international media, such as EXIT magazine and The British Journal of Photography. She also contributes as an independent writer for Source Photographic Review and C4 Journal.
Teaching
Expanded Photography MA, Photography BA (Hons), PhD Program
She is interested in supervising PhD students working around the following topics: AI, Generative and Synthetic Images, Digital Communities and Critical Practices, Datasets and Ethics, Computation and Virtual Space, Theories of Virtuality, Digital Labour and Environments, Virtual Image Systems.
Research
RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS
Peer-reviewed Journals
Gortazar, P. 2024. 'Navigating Subjectivity in AI-generated Photography: The Quest for Ethics and Creative Agency'. Philosophy of Photography. 15 (Issue 1-2: Expanded Visualities: Photography and Emerging Technologies), pp. 143-157. https://doi.org/10.1386/pop_00097_1
Gortazar, P. 2024. 'Plastic Borders: On the Photographic Frame and its Virtual Experience'. Photographies. 17 (1-2), pp. 115-127. https://doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2023.2269401
Gortazar, P. 2023. 'Cosmos, Fiction and Transcendence'. Third Text. 37 (1), pp. 1-117. https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2023.2214048
Gortázar, P. 2019. ‘Subjective Documentary Photography in ‘‘Normalised’’ Czechoslovakia (1968-89). Decoding Vladimír Birgus’ Work’. Fotocinema 19: 101-123. http://dx.doi.org/10.24310/Fotocinema.2019.v2i19.6647
Gortázar, P. 2019. ‘Toward an Emancipation of Photographic Vision: “Visualism” Under Czechoslovakian “Normalisation” (1968–89)’. Photography and Culture 12 (2): 151-170. https://doi.org/10.1080/17514517.2019.1596598
Editorial
Gortázar, P. and Esparza, R. (eds.). ‘Seeing Right: Amblyopia and The Optical Image’. In Fotocinema n.19, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.24310/Fotocinema.2019.v2i19
Book Chapters
Gortázar, P. 2024. ‘Dare me Not: Photography as Adventure in Virtual Space’, in Ali Shobeiri and Helen Westgeest (eds), Virtual Photography, Transcript Verlag: Amsterdam, Forthcoming, September 2024.
Gortázar, P. 2021. ‘Memorias de Papel: El Archivo Fotográfico y sus Lecturas’, in Parejo, N. and Blanco Pérez, M. (eds.), Historias de la Fotografía en el Siglo XXI, Madrid: Comunicación Social.
CONFERENCE PAPERS
‘Generative Photographic Spaces: A Pixel-perfect Thrill’, How Humans and Machines See the World, King’s College, London, 6th December, 2023
'Look me in the Eye!: Towards Full Ownership of Every AI Generated Photograph', Photography and Artificial Intelligence Conference, Royal photographic Society, Bristol, 9th-10th October, 2023
‘Plastic Borders: On the Photographic Frame and its Virtual Experience’, International Conference for Photography and Theory, Nicosia, Cyprus, 17th-19th November, 2022
‘The Infinite Frame: A Discussion on the Forms and Uses of Photography within Virtual Spaces’, Confoco International Congress, Universidad Complutense, Madrid, Spain, 17th-19th October, 2022
‘Remember Photography: Bidimensional Stillness and Desire in the Virtual Infinity’, Photographies International Conference, Texas State University, San Antonio, USA 23th-24th September, 2022
‘Virtual photography Explained’, Virtual photography Symposium, University of Westminster, London 20th June 2021
‘Exposed Intimacies: Power and Fragility of the Family Album’, Fotocinema International Congress, Universidad de Málaga, 29th September - 3rd October, 2021
‘Cosmos, Fiction and Transcendence: Conceptual Art and Photography in Communist Bratislava (1968-89)’, The Association for Slavic, East European, & Eurasian Studies, Washington DC, 5th-8th November 2020.
‘Towards an Emancipation of Photographic Vision: ‘Visualism’, ‘Opsognomie’ and ‘Elementary Photography’’, at the conference Practices, Circulation and Legacies: Photographic Histories in Central and Eastern Europe’, City Museum, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 8th – 10th May 2018
‘Political Frames’, at the conference Talking Pictures: Photography Today and Tomorrow, University of South Wales, 30th November – 1st December 2012
Publications
For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.