Susanna Brown is a curator, writer and educator with extensive experience working in national museums and galleries.
She is Senior Lecturer for MA Commercial Photography at London College of Communication at London College of Communication and previously taught at the Courtauld Institute of Art and London College of Fashion. She holds a BA (Hons) in History of Art from the University of Bristol and an MA in History and Theory of the Art Museum from the Courtauld Institute of Art.
Susanna has a broad knowledge of the histories and theories of photography and a particular research interest in portraiture, fashion, and exhibition-making. She has held curatorial roles at the National Portrait Gallery (2004-2008) and the Victoria and Albert Museum (2008-2021).
At the V&A she worked as part of a team of specialists responsible for the National Collection of the Art of Photography, comprising approximately one million items spanning the history of the medium and a large library of photobooks. Much of her work there centred on researching and building the collection, planning the Photography Centre, staging exhibitions, and writing publications.
The acclaimed exhibitions she has curated have travelled to more than twenty venues globally and include ‘Selling Dreams: One Hundred Years of Fashion Photography’; ‘Queen Elizabeth II by Cecil Beaton’; ‘Horst: Photographer of Style’; ‘The Body: A History of Photography’; and ‘Tim Walker: Wonderful Things’, which was seen by 550,000 visitors around the world.
Susanna has held advisory roles with the Royal Photographic Society and the Speaker’s Advisory Committee on Works of Art within the British Government. She regularly judges international competitions including the Hasselblad Award, Aesthetica Art Prize, and Google Photography Prize, and has been an invited portfolio reviewer at events such as Fotofest, US; Le Mois de la Photo, Canada; Preus Museum Photography Festival, Norway; Skåne Fotografi I Fokus, Sweden; Lianzhou Photography Festival, China; and Hyères Fashion and Photography Festival, France.
The author of eight books, and a contributor to thirteen others, Susanna presents lectures internationally on aspects of the history of photography and has featured in numerous television and radio programmes.
She collaborates with photographers, collectors, galleries, and publishers and is currently researching the intertwined histories of photography and magazines for two books to be published by Thames & Hudson in 2024/25. She is Curatorial Advisor to the George Hoyningen-Huene Estate Archives and is working with Chanel Nexus Hall on an exhibition of Hoyningen-Huene’s photographs, opening in 2024 in Tokyo.
View the MA Commercial Photography course page.