Organised by The Photographers' Gallery
What is the state of photography today? What opportunities does it provide in its practice, display and critique to think about the present moment?
In this inaugural edition of On Photography, we will look at and debate the role of photography now — in a time of widespread political, social and economic uncertainty and flux. With contributions from leading curators, photographers, artists and writers, including members from the jury for Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2022, this roundtable discussion gives insight into the most pressing concerns currently facing practitioners — and the industry more widely — and explores what considerations need to be made when representing the moment we are in.
Featuring contributions from Anne-Marie Beckmann (Director, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation), Sarah Meister (Executive Director, Aperture), writer and curator Simon Njami, and editor and writer Thyago Nogueira. Moderated by Kim Shaw (Executive Director, Photofusion). Introduction by Brett Rogers (Director, The Photographers' Gallery).
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Biographies
Anne-Marie Beckmann is an art historian and curator. She studied art history in Frankfurt/Main. Since 1999 she has been curating the Art Collection Deutsche Börse and developing the company's cultural program. Besides that she has been curating photography exhibitions at the headquarters of Deutsche Börse and in several art institutions. As member of the curatorial team she is involved in the RAY photography triennal Frankfurt/Main since 2012. Recently she co-curated the exhibition Women War Photographers. From Lee Miller to Anja Niedringhaus for the museum Kunstpalast in Düsseldorf/Germany in 2019 as well as Open for Business. Magnum photographers on commission for the Rencontres de la photographie in Arles in 2020. Beckmann published six collection catalogues (XL Photography 1-6) between 2000 and 2019. She is a lecturer in the photography department at the University of Art and Design in Offenbach/Main. Since August 2015 she is the director of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation.
Sarah Meister is executive director of Aperture, following more than 25 years at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, where she curated numerous acclaimed exhibitions including most recently Fotoclubismo: Brazilian Modernist Photography, 1946–1964 and Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures. In addition to catalogues for these exhibitions, her recent publications consider the work of Luigi Ghirri (2020), Gordon Parks (2020), Frances Benjamin Johnston (2019), Dorothea Lange (2018) and the 1967 MoMA exhibition New Documents (2017). Meister’s newest initiative is the Aperture PhotoBook Club, a series of virtual conversations that consider the photobook as a platform for contemporary creative expression.
Simon Njami is a writer, curator, essayist and art critic. He specializes in contemporary art and photography in Africa. A specialist in contemporary art and African art, he co-founded in 1991 with Jean-Loup Pivin, the Revue Noire, a magazine devoted to contemporary and non-Western African art. After creating the Ethnicolor Festival in 1987, he conceived numerous exhibitions and was one of the first to present the works of contemporary African artists on international stages. He was the artistic director of the Rencontres de Bamako, the African Biennale of Photography in 2001-2007. Njami co-curated the first African Pavilion at the 52nd Venice Biennale and helped develop the first African Contemporary Art Fair, held in Johannesburg in 2008.
In 2016 and 2018, Njami is the artistic director of the 12th and 13th edition of Dak’art, the Dakar Biennale. He is also the curator of the exhibition Afriques Capitales which was held at La Villette Paris in spring 2017 and at the Gare Saint-Sauveur in Lille, from April to September 2017. Njami has participated in numerous juries and is the secretary of the specialized jury of the World Press Photo.
Thyago Nogueira is the head of the Contemporary Photography Department at Instituto Moreira Salles, Brazil and the chief editor of ZUM photography magazine. He organised exhibitions and catalogues such as Claudia Andujar: The Yanomami Struggle (Barbican, 2020), William Eggleston: American Color (2015), Body Against Body: the battle of images from photogrpahy to live streaming (2017), Mauro Restiffe: São Paulo, Beyond Reach (2014) and Rosângela Rennó: Utopic Rio (2017). He has also guest edited Aperture magazine dedicated to São Paulo photography (2014), co-curated the Offside project with Magnum during Brazil’s World Cup, and chaired Hasselblad Award in 2019. He is currently working on a large retrospective of Daido Moriyama's work. He has just opened a large retrospective on the work of Daido Moriyama at Instituto Moreira Salles, SP.
Kim Shaw is the Director of Photofusion, a photography centre and gallery in Brixton. Photofusion supports emerging and mid career artists, working to widen access and provide development opportunities, particularly for those who are under-represented in the arts and creative industries. Prior to working at Photofusion, Kim worked in the creative industries at some of the most creative and forward thinking advertising agencies in the world including Weiden & Kennedy in Portland, USA, Tokyo and Amsterdam. Alongside this, Kim has her own photographic practice. Her work concerns itself with the mechanisms of the art world, particularly as they relate to access and opportunity, and was most recently included as a part of Photo50 at London Art Fair in January 2020.
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