Alison Nordström is an independent scholar, specializing in photographs of all kinds. She is known for her writing, speaking, and curating, and for the administration of photographic projects both in the US and internationally. Recent publications include „On Becoming an Archive” in Reading Magnum; Disappearance of Darkness: Photographs by Robert Burley; New Topographics; and Nature as Artifice: New Dutch Landscape in Photography and Video Art. She the Artistic Director of the Lodz (Poland) Fotofestiwal and Scholar-in-Residence, Graduate Department of Photography, School of Art and Design, Lesley University, in 2015.
From 2004 to 2013, Nordström was Senior Curator of Photographs at George Eastman House, the oldest and largest museum of photography in the United States, She was the Founding Director and Senior Curator of the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida from 1991 to 2002. She has curated over 100 exhibitions of photography including the popular biennial series Fresh Work, and major surveys of landscape, portraiture, travel photographs and journalism. At George Eastman House, she curated Paris: Photographs by Eugene Atget and Christopher Rauschenberg, Why Look at Animals?, Lewis Hine, Of Time and Buildings and Found: Photographs by Gerald Slota. She is a regular portfolio reviewer at festivals and other events around the world; her review discoveries include Torben Eskerod, Craig Barber, Lisa Klapstock, Susan Dobson, Susan Evans, and Candace Gaudiani, for all of whom she has produced major books and/or exhibitions. Nordström holds a BA in English Literature, an MLS with museum emphasis, and a PhD in Cultural and Visual Studies.
Her reviews are good sources for objective critique and a serious interrogation of the work presented. In addition to image content, she can discuss career next steps, galleries and museums, and can comment on issues of editing, sequence, design and presentation. She can also befriend, amuse, encourage, advise, question, challenge, recommend, champion and put things into perspective.
She is particularly interested in seeing work by contemporary photographers that they themselves characterize as documentary. However, her interests are wide and she will happily review conceptual work of all kinds, photo essays, book dummies, (especially unpublished first books), work that has political content, work smaller than 8X10, work from outside the USA, and work in progress. She is generally not interested in nudes, infrared, polacolor transfers, or commercial work except photojournalism.
