Re-count Photography Agora is a collaboration between academics and artists with the aim of creating a space for visual/photographic deliberation about the role of (ac)counting and numbers in organisations and in life. They are calling for public submissions of photographic work to explore how individuals deal with (ac)counting and numbers in their increasingly entangled private, professional, and public lives. The project is open to people across all walks of life and will remain open for submissions until 23 December 2023.
Photograph of a camera's exposure settings

Re-count Photography Agora was conceived by Afshin Mehrpouya, Professor and Chair in Accounting, Sustainability & Governance at the University of Edinburgh Business School and is co-organised by Wafa Khlif, Professor of Accounting at the TBS Business School in Barcelona and Head of the Accounting, Auditing and Control Lab. The project is supported by an international team of artists and academics who form its Curatorial Board and is staffed by research assistants at the University of Edinburgh and Toulouse Business School.

All works submitted will be featured in an online gallery on the Re-count Photography Agora website, and will receive feedback from the Curatorial Board. Short-listed works will be displayed in two physical exhibitions in Barcelona and Edinburgh. Some submissions will also be included in an edited book based on reflections by the Curatorial Board in relation to received photos and exchanges.

According to Professor Afshin Mehrpouya, “Quantification pervades modern life. Our professional, public and private lives, our relations to each other, and to nature are quantified by markets, organisations and governments to shape and foresee our behaviours. And with recent technological advances such as the prevalence of smartphones, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data, accounts and accounting are becoming entangled in our lives in new and more pervasive ways.” Wafa Khlif explains, “the project aims to create a unique intellectual and aesthetic space to question our inability to think of our lives and our societies without numbers and accounting. By giving a value to zero, we may have changed our ability to think of the togetherness, the emptiness and the whole.”

Re-count Photography Agora is an attempt to guide attention towards the visual aspects of accounting and quantification in the hope of enabling a unique and refreshing dialogue about this contemporary phenomenon. Within this process, they aim to facilitate connections between academic and artistic communities, incubate collaborative and inter-disciplinary work and to enable a visual exchange among citizens, artists and academics alike.

To find out more about this project and if you wish to submit your work, visit Recount Photography Agora