ALISON NORDSTRÖM

“USEFUL PHOTOGRAPHS. DOCUMENTARY AS HISTORY AND IDEA”

Alison Nordström is an independent scholar, writer and curator specializing in photography. Her long career in the field includes positions as Founding Director and Senior Curator of the Southeast Museum of Photography (FL), and Senior Curator of Photographs, Director of Exhibitions at George Eastman House (NY). She has worked extensively with photographers and photographic institutions in Europe, Asia and the Americas; Her essays have been published by Aperture, Dewi Lewis, Kehrer Verlag, Steidl, Radius, Daylight, Routledge and University of Texas Press, among others. She has curated over 100 photographic exhibitions in nine countries, including Lewis Hine, Truth/Beauty: Pictorialism and the Photograph as Art, 1845–1945, and Ideas in Things: Photography and Materiality. In 2015 and 2016 she was artistic Director of Fotofestiwal Lodz, in Poland. She was the curator of Joan Fontcuberta: Crisis of History for the Hamburg Photographic Triennial in 2018, and of Findings. Torben Eskerod opening on view at Fotografie Forum Frankfurt in November 2020. She is currently a Research Associate in Photography at Harvard University.