Charlotte Cotton
Charlotte Cotton (born 1970) is an independent curator of and writer about photography. She has held positions including Head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Head of Programming at The Photographers' Gallery, London, Creative Director at the National Media Museum, UK, Curator of Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Curator in Residence at the Katonah Museum of Art, NY, Curator in Residence for International Center of Photography’s new museum and events space, 250 Bowery, and Curator in Residence at Metabolic Studio, LA where she participated in a  program celebrating the legacy of the Woman's Building, founded by Judy Chicago, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville and Arlene Raven. She is currently Curator in Residence at the California Museum of Photography, in Riverside, CA and is currently working on the second version of her exhibition "Public, Private, Secret" and the first survey exhibition of LA artist Brandon Lattu. Cotton has curated a number of exhibitions on contemporary photography, and her publications include "The Photograph as Contemporary Art", "Imperfect Beauty", "Then Things Went Quiet", "Guy Bourdin", and "Photography is Magic". She is also the founder of wordswithoutpictures.org (2008–9) and EitherAnd.org  (2012). "Words Without Pictures" was published as a print and eBook by Aperture in 2010. Life and career. Cotton was born in the Cotswolds in England. She studied Art History at the University of Sussex in Brighton. Victoria and Albert Museum. Cotton was curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1993 to 2004. She started working as an intern there in 1992. She curated many exhibitions of historical and contemporary photography at the museum including: "Imperfect Beauty: the making of contemporary fashion photographs" (2000), "Out of Japan" (2002), "Stepping In and Out: contemporary documentary photography" (2003) and  Guy Bourdin (2003). Section::::"The Photograph as Contemporary Art". The book "The Photograph as Contemporary Art" provides an introduction to contemporary art-photography, identifying its most important features and themes and celebrating its pluralism through an overview of its most important and innovative practitioners. The work of nearly 250 photographers is reproduced, from established artists such as Isa Genzken, Jeff Wall, Sophie Calle, Thomas Demand, Nan Goldin, and Sherrie Levine to emerging talents such Walead Beshty, Jason Evans, Lucas Blalock, Sara VanDerBeek, and Viviane Sassen. The first edition of "The Photograph as Contemporary Art" was published in 2004. The third was  published in 2014 and has a new introduction and extended final chapter. "The Photograph as Contemporary Art" is published in nine languages. The Photographers' Gallery. Cotton was Head of Programming at The Photographers' Gallery, London from 2004 to 2005. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Cotton was Curator and Head of the Wallis Annenberg Department of Photography at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) from 2007 to 2009. "Charlotte's career bridges the traditional and the contemporary. That is her real strength," said LACMA Director Michael Govan. "At the Victoria & Albert, she dealt with a collection of some 300,000  photographs that has great 19th century and early 20th century material, so she had a real grounding in a big museum collection and historic work. Then she gave it up to experiment and learn more about photography in the contemporary world. She has had huge experience, and she has taken risks. That's a good combination." Section::::"Photography is Magic". "Photography is Magic" is a critical book that surveys the work of over eighty artists, all of whom have experimental approaches to photographic ideas, set within the contemporary image environment, framed by Web 2.0. "Photography is Magic" surveys over eighty artists  whose practices are shaping the possibilities of the contemporary photographic landscape. The contributors include Elad Lassry, Sara VanDerBeek and Kate Steciw. Curated projects. Exhibitions organized and co-organized by Cotton: Books. Books that Cotton has authored and edited: Teaching. Cotton has been a visiting critic and scholar at numerous universities and schools in the US and the UK including: NYU Tisch, New York; CCA, San Francisco; Parsons and SVA, New York; Yale University, New Haven; UPenn, Philadelphia; and UCLA, USC, UC Irvine, Los Angeles; Farnham College, Surrey Institute of Design, UK. Quotes. In reference to "Public, Private, Secret": I think  what the exhibition centers on is the "idea" of photography rather than the more literal approach of a photograph being a physical manifestation or illustration of an idea. As a result, it’s quite a cerebral experience—even if you come from a very classical understanding of photography—to have photographs that you may already know be contextualized by their connections with contemporary works and the curation of real-time media streams. I think it makes the meaning of photography aptly malleable.