Contemporary photography of the territory tends to be generic, not only because it represents specific types of spaces, but also because it tends to represent in a 'generic' way. This is possibly due to the impact of globalisation on the production of the contemporary territory and the theoretical discourses that focus on it. Or perhaps it also has to do with the definitive entry of photography in the exhibition spaces of the art gallery and museum.

The contemporary photographic landscape usually involves a view from afar, offering a panorama of the territory that is objective, objectual, slow, pictorial and large-size. This can be seen in, for example, the work of Nadav Kander in China (Yangtze, The Long River, 2010), Mark Power in Poland (A Tale of Two Songs, 2010) and the work of Simon Norfolk (Burke + Norfolk: Photographs from the War in Afghanistan by John Burke and Simon Norfolk, 2011) and Donovan Wylie (Outposts: Kandahar Province, 2010) in Afghanistan, in which the photographer works embedded in the brute military force of globalisation. In line with these representations of the territory, which share a certain formal aesthetic, technical complexity and logistic difficulty, there are others that have been carried out based on criteria that are more in keeping with political geography, social anthropology and archaeology. Examples include the work of Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin on Israel (Chicago, 2007), Walid Raad on the Lebanon (The Atlas Group) and the work of Bruno Serralongue, Lothar Baumgarten (Carbon, 1990) and John Gossage (There and Gone, 1997), among others.

Contemporary photography of the territory has to deal with the complexity of globalisation and its effects on the structures of power and territorial control mechanisms. This workshop proposes a reflection on these photographic practices to investigate the political and aesthetic discourses they construct and the way in which they view the political, social and economic processes involved in the contemporary construction of the territory.