Professor Mark Sealy

Biography

Dr Mark Sealy OBE is interested in the relationship between photography and social change, identity politics, race, and human rights. He has been the executive director of the London-based photographic arts charity Autograph since 1991. He 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 an £8 million capital new building project (Rivington Place), which opened in 2007 in London. The project was Sir David Adjaye’s first new build public art gallery. He has written for international photography and art publications, including Foam Magazine, Aperture, and Tate Magazine. He has contributed numerous essays for academic publications and artist monographs. In 2002, Sealy and Professor Stuart Hall co-authored Different for Phaidon, which focused on photography and identity politics. Recent notable projects include commissioning The Unfinished Conversation, a three-screen film work by John Akomfrah and co-curating the expanded exhibition Encoding / Decoding for the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery Toronto Canada, which included artists such as Steve McQueen and Zineb Sidera, among several others. His many other cultural initiatives include pioneering exhibitions on the works of James Van Der Zee, Gordon Parks, Carrie Mae Weems, Rotimi Fani - Kayode and the works of Mahtab Hussain, Maud Sulter and Franklyn Rodgers. Sealy has served as a jury member for many renowned awards, including World Press Photo, the Carmignac Gestion photojournalism award, judged and chaired the 1,000,000 SEK Hasselblad Foundation's Photography Award and in 2015, he has judged and chaired the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Book awards. He joined the Open Society Foundation's Documentary Photography Project Advisory Board in 2014, helping the organization restructure its art policies and programs. 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 as the Les Rencontres d'Arles France and Kyoto Photo in Japan, Chobi Mela Bangladesh, and the 1st Bamako Photography Festival in Mali 1994. He has also worked with Sky Arts on their TV production, Master of Photography. He has devised photography studies programs for academic institutions and mentored a range of artists and curators over many years, working specifically with the British Council in Australia.
Core to his role at Autograph has been the commissioning of new works by artists and the development of a now internationally recognized photographic collection dedicated to issues of race, rights, and representation. He was awarded the Hood Medal (2007) by the Royal Photographic Society. The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) was awarded for services to photography in 2013. In 2022 he was awarded an (OBE) Order of the British Empire for services to art. His PhD from Durham University, England, focused on photography and cultural violence and was awarded in 2016. In 2019 he published his now acclaimed best-selling book 'Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time with Lawrence and Wishart and was also 2019 awarded the Outstanding Service to Photography Award by The Royal Photographic Society. 2020 he is the Guest Curator for the Houston Foto Fest Biennial titled African Cosmologies Photography Time and The Other. In 2020, he joined the University of Arts London academic staff and is currently a Photography Rights and Representation Professor. 2022 He published his critical writings titled, Photography, Race, Rights and Representation with Lawrence and Wishart.