logo_Biennial2020-black

Curator Talk: Mark Sealy

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2019, 6:30pm

SILVER STREET STUDIOS
2000 Edwards Street, Houston, Texas 77007

Mark Sealy MBE, FotoFest Biennial 2020 Curator, presents a talk focusing on his work as the Director of Autograph ABP (London), his research and writing on decolonizing photography, and his curatorial process working on the upcoming FotoFest Biennial 2020, African Cosmologies: Photography, Time, and the Other.

Sealy’s recently published book, Decolonizing the Camera: Photography in Racial Time (Lawrence & Wishart, 2019), considers whether photographic practice and photographic history has been utilized as a liberating device, or as an oppressive weapon in colonized communities of color. He proposes a reading of photographic media through the lenses of Blackness and Otherness, reorienting the colonial gaze, and empowering the subjects in front of, and behind the camera. For his talk, Sealy will discuss these important topics and the ways in which his research has informed his approach to curating the FotoFest Biennial 2020 exhibition.

MarkSealy_porrtrait

Paul Mpagi Sepuya

ABOUT MARK SEALY
Dr. Mark Sealy MBE is interested in the relationship between photography and social change, identity politics, race, and human rights. He has been director of London-based photographic arts charity Autograph ABP since 1991 and has produced numerous artist publications, curated exhibitions, and commissioned photographers and filmmakers worldwide, including the critically acclaimed Human Rights Human Wrongs exhibition curated for Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto, in 2013 and The Photographers’ Gallery, London, in 2015.

He jointly initiated and developed a £7.96 million capital building project (Rivington Place), which opened in 2007 in London. He has written for international photography publications, including Foam Magazine, Aperture, Creative Camera and Next Level, and written numerous essays for publications and artist monographs. In 2002, Sealy and professor Stuart Hall coauthored Different, which focuses on photography and identity politics. Recent notable projects include curating The Unfinished Conversation: Encoding/Decoding  for the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto (Canada) and critically acclaimed exhibitions on the works of James Van Der Zee, Gordon Parks, Carrie Mae Weems, Rotimi Fani-Kayode and on the works of Mahtab Hussain and Maud Sulter. 

Sealy has served as a photography jury member for World Press Photo, the Carmignac Gestion photojournalism award, the Hasselblad Foundation’s Photography Award, and the Sony World Photo award. In 2015, he chaired the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Book award and joined the Open Society Foundation’s Documentary Photography Project Advisory Board. In 2017 he was Chair of the Hasselblad Awards. Sealy has guest lectured at various institutions around the world such as the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Royal College of Art London, Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery Toronto, and Tate Britain/Modern. He has curated exhibitions for international photography festivals across the globe such Arles France, Kyoto Japan Drik Bangladesh and Bamako Mali. He has devised global photography MA studies program for academic institutions and mentored a range of artists and curators over many years. He was awarded the Hood Medal by the Royal Photographic Society and a Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) which was awarded for services to photography in 2013. His PhD from Durham University England focused on photography and cultural violence was gained in 2016.

2018-2019 EXHIBITION SPONSORS

Houston Endowment; The Brown Foundation, Inc.; City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance; David and Martha Moore; National Endowment for the Arts; Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation; The Wortham Foundation; Texas Commission on the Arts; Judith and Gamble Baldwin; The Powell Foundation; FotoFest Board of Directors; Silver Street Studios; Hexagroup; Iland Internet Solutions; and generous donors to the FotoFest Challenge Grant and FotoFest Annual Fund.