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Susanna Brown

Profession
Senior Lecturer, Photography
College
London College of Communication
Person Type
Staff
Susanna Brown

Biography

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.

Related area

View the MA Commercial Photography course page.

Specialist areas

Books

  • (ed.) George Hoyningen-Huene: Photography, Fashion, Film. London: Thames & Hudson, 2024
  • Horst: Cy Twombly. Göttingen: Steidl, 2024
  • (ed.) Tim Walker: Wonderful Things. London: V&A Publishing, 2019 (Chinese translation, 2021)
  • Nick Veasey: Inside Out. Stockholm: Bokförlaget Max Ström, 2017
  • (ed.) Horst, Photographer of Style. London: V&A Publishing, 2014 (German translation, 2016)
  • Horst: Highlights. London: V&A Publishing, 2014
  • Queen Elizabeth II: Portraits by Cecil Beaton. London: V&A Publishing, 2011
  • Photography Now: Vision, Devotion, Revelation. London: Hackelbury, 2009

Book chapters and essays

  • ‘Yevonde’s Influence on Contemporary Fashion Photography’, in C. Freestone (ed.), Yevonde: Life and Colour. London: National Portrait Gallery, 2023
  • ‘The 1920s: Modernity and Iridescence’, in I. Shaw (ed.), Chronorama: Photographic Treasures of the 20th Century. New York: Abrams, 2023
  • ‘Corina Gertz: An Eternal Typology’, in C.M. Sels (ed.), Corina Gertz: The Averted Portrait. Berlin: Kerber Verlag, 2023
  • ‘Viviane Sassen: A Conversation’, in K. Johnson (ed.), Surrealism and Design Now. London: Design Museum, 2022
  • ‘Tim Walker: Stranger Than Paradise’, in K. Johnson (ed.), Surrealism and Design Now. London: Design Museum, 2022
  • ‘A beautiful chimera: Horvat’s early fashion photography’, in V. Chardin (ed.), Frank Horvat 50-65. Paris: Jeu de Paume/Éditions de La Martinière, 2022
  • ‘Frances McLaughlin-Gill’, in L. Lebart and M. Robert (eds.), Une histoire mondiale des femmes photographes. Paris: Les Éditions Textuel, 2020. (English edition: A World History of Women Photographers, London: Thames & Hudson, 2022)
  • ‘Photographic Interpretations’, in J. Lister (ed.), Mary Quant.London: V&A Publishing, 2019
  • ‘Letting the Skirts Down, 1947-69’, in P. Martineau (ed.), Icons of Style: A Century of Fashion Photography. Los Angeles: Getty Museum, 2018
  • ‘Leigh through the lens: Photographic collaborators’, in K. Dorney (ed.), Vivien Leigh: Actress and Icon. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017
  • ‘Nightmares and Dreams’, in C. Wilcox (ed.), Alexander McQueen. London: V&A Publishing, 2015
  • ‘Portraits of Artists’, in T. Pepper (ed.), Cecil Beaton: Portraits. Istanbul: Pera Museum, 2015
  • ‘Early fashion photography’; ‘Post-War fashion photography’; ‘Fashion and style’, in J. Hacking (ed.), Photography: The Whole Story. London: Thames & Hudson, 2012
  • Biographies of Walter Stoneman, Howard Coster, Alexander Bassano and Walter Bird in The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006

Articles

  • ‘Out of the Shadows’ The British Journal of Photography, May 2021
  • ‘The Legacy Lives On: Cathleen Naundorf’ V&A Magazine, Autumn/Winter 2014
  • ‘Object Lesson: Robert Brownjohn’ V&A Magazine, Summer 2013
  • ‘Cecil Beaton and the iconography of the House of Windsor’ Photography & Culture, vol.4, issue 3, November 2011
  • ‘Curator’s View’ Distill Magazine, Issue 2 and Issue 3, 2008-2009
  • ‘Portraits’ Cent Magazine: The Family and Community Issue, 2007
  • ‘Jonathan Root: Sitting Pretty’ Blueprint, September 2007

Television, radio and podcasts

London College of Communication

Contact

Telephone

+44 (0)20 7514 6500

Address

Elephant & Castle

London
SE1 6SB