- Centre for Research and Education in Arts and Media
About me
Dr David Campany, writes, curates exhibitions, edits books, makes art and teaches a range of modules in photographic theory and practice, from undergraduate to doctoral study. His many authored books include On Photographs (Thames & Hudson 2022) translated into four languages; Victor Burgin's Photopath (MACK 2022); 'Indeterminacy: thoughts on time, the image and race(ism)', co-written with Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa (MACK 2022); So Present, So Invisible - conversations on Photography' (Contrasto 2018), translated into three languages; Walker Evans: the magazine work (Steidl 2014), Gasoline (MACK, 2013), Jeff Wall: Picture for Women (Afterall/MIT 2010), Photography and Cinema (Reaktion 2008) and Art and Photography (Phaidon 2003). He has published over three hundred essays for anthologies, catalogues and monographs, and has written for Frieze, Photoworks, Aperture, Source, Art Review, The Oxford Art Journal, The Philosophy of Photography and Tate magazine among others. He has spoken on various issues in photography at venues worldwide including Centre Pompidou, Jeu de Paume, the Reina Sofia Madrid, Tate Modern, New York's Museum of Art and Design, Aperture and Le Bal. In 2013 David curated major shows of the work of Mark Neville (The Photographer's Gallery, London) and Victor Burgin (AmbikaP3 and Richard Saltoun Gallery).
Recent curatorial work includes Immersion: Gregory Halpern, Vasantha Yogananthan, Raymond Meeks (ICP, 2023), William Klein: Yes–Photographs, Paintings, Films 1948-2013 (ICP, New York, 2022); ACTUAL SIZE! Photography at Life Scale (ICP, 2022); A Trillion Sunsets: A Century of Image Overload (ICP, 2022); and Gillian Laub: Family Matters (ICP, 2021).
He is Curator of the three-city / six museum Biennale für aktuelle Fotografie, 2020, Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and Heidelberg, working with 70 artists from 14 countries worldwide.
David is a recipient of the International Center of Photography's Infinity Award for his writing.
Teaching
David has taught in many areas of photographic theory and practice, from darkroom work, studio work and book production to classes on the history of the magazine page, the history of exhibitions, experimental photojournalism and documentary, image/text interactions; the cinematic, revisions of modernism, semiotics & rhetoric, postcolonial practices, photography in and out of art after 1945, writing & the image, and the portrait.
Research
David's current research interests include:
- Photography and the magazine/book page
- Photography and the moving image
- Historical and contemporary exhibition practices
- New forms of photojournalism and documentary
- Experimental art writing
- Rethinking Modernism
- The legacies of conceptual art
He is looking for doctoral candidates in these fields.
Publications
For details of all my research outputs, visit my WestminsterResearch profile.