Visual Trust: An ERC project on ethics, images, and visual experimentation

In this talk, Roger Canals will present the key principles and preliminary findings of the ERC project, 'Visual Trust'. Reliability, accountability and forgery in scientific, religious and social images (2021-2027, PI: Roger Canals). This comparative project aims to investigate, through visual and experimental methods, how individuals from different socio-cultural milieus relate to and through images in terms of trust and mistrust. The project brings together a variety of images, including photojournalistic pictures, digital fakes, religious icons, AI-generated images, astronomical images and medical imaging. The session will include a screening of some of the project's visual outcomes. Roger Canals will also provide definitions of key project concepts such as 'visual trust', 'eclectic assemblage' and 'visual assessment'.

Roger Canals is a Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Barcelona (UB). He is currently the PI of the ERC-Consolidator project ‘Visual Trust. Reliability, accountability, and forgery in scientific, religious and social images’ (2021-2026). Specialist in Visual Anthropology, he is the author of many articles as well as of the books including A Goddess in Motion (2017) and The Image that Never Ends. A Journey through Visual Anthropology (forthcoming). As a filmmaker, he has made several internationally awarded films like “A Goddess in Motion” (2016) and “Chasing Shadows” (2019). In 2016, he received the Fejos Fellowship for Ethnographic Film from the Wenner-Gren Foundation of New York.

Location

Brooks Building, G.78 (LT1), Manchester Metropolitan University

Parking

There is a surface-level car park directly outside the Brooks Building with reserved areas for those with disability access needs. Other nearby public options include the Booth Street West and Cecil Street multi-storey car parks. Dilworth Street (Car Park F) is also available to visitors after 4 pm on weekdays and all day at weekends, but is staff-only outside those hours.