Welcome to the website of the Photo Seminar of Master’s students at UGent
COLLECTIVE NARRATIVES
This site presents projects developed by the 2024–25 and 2025–26 cohorts. Through their research, students engaged with the photographic collections of the Royal Museums of Art and History (RMAH) in Brussels, exploring, analyzing, and reinterpreting them. Under the supervision of Professor Dr. Marie Auger, they selected heritage objects, conducted archival research, and developed their own perspectives. Their work took the form of pop-up exhibitions at the Centre VANDENHOVE studio in Ghent, alongside this website created with Omeka S and printed editions. While part of the results is presented here, the value of these projects lies primarily in process and experimentation, supported by an approach grounded in cooperation and autonomy.
A RESEARCH PROGRAM BETWEEN A UNIVERSITY AND A MUSEUM
This project is part of the federal FED-tWIN programme, launched by the Belgian Science Policy Office, which fosters collaboration between universities and federal institutions and is centered on the photographic collection of the Royal Museums of Art and History. Comprising approximately 120,000 items, this collection remains largely understudied and calls for renewed attention, both for its scholarly value and its preservation. As part of the Bicentenary of Photography programme led by the French Ministry of Culture, the second cohort’s project (2025–26) was conceived to highlight the richness and fragility of Belgium’s federal photographic heritage while opening new avenues for research.
NAVIGATION
OMEKA S was used to publish student content online, with the aim of creating synergy with the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities, which promotes its use among teachers. The tool was also chosen because it is open-source software commonly used by museums for the management and dissemination of digital collections. The layout is partly shaped by the constraints of the platform, as well as by UGent’s guidelines. The top tabs, along with the links below, allow users to navigate between the two annual projects and to access all selected and showcased images. The image collections are also available as standalone resources.