Biography:
Martin Barnes is Senior Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London, one of the world’s leading museums of art and design, which he joined in 1995. The museum houses the national collection of the art of photography in the United Kingdom. Prior to that he worked for the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and studied at the University of Leicester and the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Martin Barnes has curated numerous exhibitions, including Aspects of Architecture; Where Are We?: Questions of Landscape and Something That I’ll Never Really See: Contemporary Photography from the V&A. In addition, he curated Diane Arbus Revelations (2005–06) and Twilight: Photography in the Magic Hour (2006). He is currently working on the exhibition Shadow Catchers: Contemporary Camera-less Photography, which will open in 2010.
His publications include Benjamin Brecknell Turner: Rural England through a Victorian Lens (2001), Illumine: Photographs by Garry Fabian Miller (2005), and Twilight: Photography in the Magic Hour (2006), as well as numerous books and articles on contemporary photographers.

Reviewing focus:
Martin Barnes is interested in all types of creative photography that is well thought-out and presented in terms of concept, but is particularly interested in work that has personal and poetic expression.

Further information:

www.vam.ac.uks

Biography:
Denis Brudna is editor and author of the German photo magazine Photonews, which he founded 1989. Anna Gripp has been a member of the core team of Photonews from the outset and is co-editor of the magazine, which is issued ten times per year in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Photonews reports on international exhibitions and festivals on the theme of photography. In addition to interviews with people involved in the world of photography, the magazine presents reviews of exhibitions and books; information from academies and universities about courses of study, tuition, and scholarships; and a selection of interesting portfolios of young and established photographers.
Anna Gripp also comes from the field of practical photography: after interning with a photographer in Berlin, she started an apprenticeship with a photographer at the Bavarian State Academy of Photography in Munich. Today, besides her activity at Photonews, she works as a freelance author. One of her publications is the book Fotografie-Studium in Deutschland (Studying Photography in Germany, 1993). She also regularly participates in reviewing.

Denis Brudna studied painting, graphic art, and photography in Prague, and in 1971 he was a founding member of the cultural center Fabrik in Hamburg. He has curated numerous photography exhibitions presented in the series Fabrik Fotoforum at the Altonaer Museum, Museum für Kunst und Kulturgechichte in Hamburg.
The session will be conducted either by Anna Gripp or Denis Brudna.

Further information:

www.photonews.de

Biography:
Milan Chlumsky has been a reviewer, curator, and photographer in France, Germany and Czechoslovakia for thirty-five years. He studied aesthetics and literature at the universities of Prague and Strasbourg and at the Sorbonne in Paris. Chlumsky publishes, among others, in the FAZ, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, and in the magazines Fotogeschichte, Revue d’Esthétique, and Ceskoslovenská fotografie on art, literature, photography, and aesthetics. As a curator, he conceived, among others, the exhibition Die Gebrüder Bisson, Aufstieg und Fall eines Fotografieunternehmes im 19. Jahrhundert, which was shown at the Museum Folkwang Essen as well as at the Fotomuseum in the Münchner Stadtmuseum. As a photographer, he has had numerous solo and group exhibitions in France, Spain, and Germany (among others at the German-American Institute Heidelberg, the Institut Français Heidelberg, and the Centre Culturel Franco-Allemand Tübingen).

Reviewing focus:
Works in the areas of architecture and landscape.

Biography:
As curator at the Museum Ludwig, Barbara Engelbach is responsible for contemporary art, photography, and media art. Prior to that, from 1999 to 2004 she directed and designed the Museum für Gegenwartskunst Siegen, which opened in 2001. From 1997 to 1999, she worked as an academic volunteer at the Westfälisches Landesmuseum, Münster, and was co-curator of the Skulptur-Biennale in Münsterland in 1998. She studied art history and German language, literature, and culture in Fribourg and Hamburg. She received her PhD in Hamburg in 1997 for a dissertation on performance art, photography, and video art.
Engelbach’s publications and exhibitions mainly address contemporary art, photography, video and public art, as well as theoretical questions regarding intermedia, media specificity, and the history of established genres. To date, she has curated monographic exhibitions on Maria Lassnig, Diana Thater, Gregor Schneider, Rosemarie Trockel, Ed Ruscha, Manfred Pernice, Jonas Mekas, et al. Group exhibitions such as Künstler und Fotografie (Artists and Photography, 2007) and Looking for Mushrooms (2008) explored issues concerning the meaning of photography and art today.

Further information:
www.museenkoeln.de/museum-ludwig/

Biography:
Christine Frisinghelli is the Editor in chief of Camera Austria International magazine and head of publication and of the exhibition programme of Camera Austria, Kunsthaus Graz.
She has curated numerous exhibitions, e.g. the Austrian contribution to the Photography Biennial Rotterdam, Questioning Europe (1989) War. 1st Austrian Triennial of Photography, Graz (1993) and Another Continent, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography (1994). Since 2001 Frisinghelli is custodian of the photographic archive of Pierre Bourdieu, co-curator, and co-editor (with Franz Schultheis) of the internationally travelling exhibition and accompanying book "Pierre Bourdieu. In Algeria. Testimonies of Uprooting".

Further information:
http://www.camera-austria.at

Biography:
Felix Hoffmann is an art historian and chief curator at C/O Berlin. In 2003 and 2004, he received a stipend within the scope of the program museum curators for photography by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung at the Fotomuseum in the Münchner Stadtmuseum, the Kupferstichkabinett Dresden, and the Museum Folkwang Essen. In recent years, he has organized several exhibitions at C/O Berlin presenting, among others, Andres Serrano, Bettina Rheims, Annie Leibovitz, and Alec Soth. Since 2000, the privately funded institution C/O Berlin has been the showroom for photography in Berlin. Solo exhibitions of internationally established photographers (including Martin Parr, René Burri, James Nachtwey, Anton Corbijn, and Annie Leibovitz) have demonstrated the conceptual authority and high standard of C/O Berlin. With their exhibition and publication program Talents, C/O Berlin offers young photographers and art and culture critics who are between apprenticeships or jobs access to their first public platform, thus creating a place for young German and international contemporary photography and art criticism to flourish.

Further information:
www.co-berlin.info

Biography:
Gordon MacDonald has worked for more than ten years for Photoworks in Brighton, where he is responsible for the area of publications. Photoworks commissions new photography, develops exhibitions, initiates research and education projects, and publishes books and a biannual magazine that presents portfolios of contemporary photography. Prior to joining Photoworks, he worked with the British Council and coordinated the Shoreditch Biennial, London.
Over the course of his career, MacDonald has curated numerous group exhibitions, published books on Joachim Schmid, Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, and Anna Fox, among many others, and written articles on or interviewed some of the most important figures in contemporary photography. In addition, he is the co-founder and chairman of the Brighton Photo Fringe, a festival that took place in 2008 parallel to the Brighton Photo Biennale.
MacDonald is currently working on an issue of Photoworks magazine, due for publication in spring 2010, that focuses on contemporary German photography, as well as on a new series of international artists' project books.

Further information:

www.photoworksuk.org,www.photofringe.org

Biography:
In 1998, while still an apprentice bookseller, Markus Schaden opened the photo and design bookstore Schaden.com in Cologne. Since then, it has ranked among the best addresses for people interested in photography. Furthermore, he runs a publishing house of the same name that issues limited photography editions and special releases. His online portal regularly presents information on new photo publications. He also writes the Bookmarks column for Photonews.
Since 2006, this acknowledged expert on photography books has worked as an editorial journalist for the international photographic magazine foam, which is published quarterly by the Foam_Fotografiemuseum Amsterdam. In each issue, the magazine presents the works of six artists, whose detailed portfolios are introduced in reference to a specific theme.

Further information:
www.schaden.com, www.foammagazine.nl

Biography:
Rudolf Scheutle is curator at the Münchner Stadtmuseum/Photography Collection as well as assistant professor of the history of photography at the University of Applied Sciences in Munich.
After studying art history, theater sciences, and sociology in Munich, Scheutle taught the history of photography at the University of Eichstätt, Ingolstadt, and worked as a curator and author in the field of photography and contemporary art. He has curated, among others, the exhibitions: Zeitzonen—3: Triennale zeitgenössischer Kunst Weingarten (2005), Last & Lost—Bilder eines verschwindenden Europas (2006), and Urban Conditions (2007). He planned and implemented Lehrjahre Lichtjahre—Die Münchner Fotoschule 1900–2000 (2000) and Nude Visions—150 Aktfotografie (2007) at the Münchner Stadtmuseum.

Biography:
Thomas Schirmböck has been the director and curator of Zephyr—Raum für Fotografie in Mannheim since 2005. Zephyr is an exhibition space devoted primarily to contemporary photography. Since spring 2005, Zephyr has realized a multifaceted program of international contemporary art in solo, group, and thematic exhibitions in both its own space and at the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen.
After studying European art history, archeology, and political science in Heidelberg, Schirmböck set up the community photography gallery Alte Feuerwache in Mannheim from 1996 to 2004. He taught at the Hochschule Mannheim from 1996 to 1999. His recent exhibitions include FotoChina (2006), my vision—Ideen für die Welt von Morgen (2007), Spurensuche: Polizeifotografie 1946–1971 (2008), Paolo Pellegin As I Was Dying (2008), and Sascha Weidner Am Wasser gebaut (2009).

Reviewing focus:
Thomas Schirmböck is interested in conceptual photography and photography with social relevance and a relation to the present.

Further information:
www.zephyr-mannheim.de

Biography:
Inka Schube has been director of the department of photography and media art at the Sprengel Museum Hannover since 2001. From 1987 to 1990 she worked as a freelance curator and art historian. She founded the Galerie in der Brotfabrik (Gallery in the Bread Factory) in Berlin in 1990; the Brotfabrik is a center for art and culture Schube directed until 1998. Here she realized projects on, among others, Boris Mikhailov, Nan Goldin, Peter Greenaway, and Indian bazaar photography, as well as Heimat, an exhibition conceived in 1994 in connection with the war in former Yugoslavia, which, after opening in the Galerie in der Brotfabrik, was also shown at other venues, including the Photo Biennale Rotterdam. In 1997, in response to her work on photography in the GDR in the eighties, she was awarded an Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung scholarship for museum practice and photography. In 2000, she curated the exhibition Here and now for the Photo Biennial Rotterdam. In addition, she has developed exhibitions and publications on the work of Max Baumann, Sophie Calle, Stephan Balkenhol, Martha Rosler, Helga Paris, Shirana Shahbazi, Heidi Specker, Thomas Ruff, Hans-Peter Feldmann (2007), and Helen Levitt (2008).
Schube publishes essays in numerous exhibition publications and journals and is also active as a lecturer and jury member.

Reviewing focus:

Further information:
www.sprengel-museum.de

Biography:
Wim van Sinderen began his career in the eighties as an art journalist and photo editor. In 1992 he was appointed curator of the Kunsthal Rotterdam. He has been senior curator of the Hague Museum of Photography and keeper of the photography collection at the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag since 2002.
The Hague Museum of Photography opened at the end of 2002 with the successful exhibition Photographers in the Netherlands 1852-2002. Each year, the museum presents at least four interesting and up-to-the-minute exhibitions focusing on well-known, established stances as well as on new talent. The museum works hand in hand with the University of Leiden Print Room, which possesses one of the largest and most important collections of historical photographs in Europe.
Since 1992, van Sinderen has curated several monographic exhibitions, ranging from historical photographers such as Erwin Blumenfeld, Manuel Alvarez Bravo, or Leonard Freed to contemporary photographic ‘image makers’ such as Michael Najjar, Loretta Lux, Desiree Dolron, and Erwin Olaf.

Further information:
www.fotomuseumdenhaag.nl

Biography:
Claude W. Sui has been director of and curator at the Forum International Photography, Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen Mannheim, since 2002. He studied art history, philosophy, and ethnology at the universities of Mainz and Frankfurt and received his PhD on the work of the photographer Robert Haeusser. Sui is responsible for the scholarly processing of the contemporary Helmut-Gernsheim-Sammlung, the Robert-Haeusser-Archiv, and the historic collection of travel photographs of the Reiss siblings. The following are a selection of the exhibitions Sui curated at the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen: Irinel Stegaru (2001), Robert Häusser, Photographien 1938–2004 (2006), Ins heilige Land: Pilgerstätten von Jerusalem bis Mekka und Medina, Photographien aus dem 19. Jahrh. (2008), Robert Häusser: Das Moortagebuch (2008), and Weltstars der Fotografie: Die Preisträger der Hasselblad Foundation (2009).

Further information:
www.rem-mannheim.de

Biography:
Christoph Tannert has been project manager since 1991 and manager of the artist-in- residence program at the Bethanien Berlin since 2000. In 2007, he curated the 2nd Fotofestival Mannheim_Ludwigshafen_Heidelberg. Tannert studied archaeology and fine arts at the Humboldt University Berlin and worked from 1984 until 1990 as a freelance critic and exhibition organizer in Berlin and eastern Europe.
Tannert belongs to the permanent reviewing team of the FotoFest Houston, one of the most important international photo festivals in the United States, and is time and again invited to other international festivals. Furthermore, he is a member of the editorial advisory council of the magazine European Photography and has contributed numerous texts to exhibition catalogues, anthologies, and daily and specialized press publications.

Further information:
www.bethanien.de, www.european-photography.com