Mark Durden 

• Name : Mark Durden

• Job Title : Professor of Photography

• Email : Mark.Durden@newport.ac.uk

• Contact Telephone Number : 01633 432174

• Campus : Caerleon

• Academic Faculty and School or Department : Arts and Business

• Biography : Born in Stourbridge, UK.  Lecturer and Senior Lecturer in History of Art and Design at Staffordshire University from 1993-1998. From 1998 until 2002, he was Senior Lecturer in History and Theory of Photography at the University of Derby. In 2002 he was made Reader and in 2003 he became Programme Leader of the BA (Hons) Photography Programme at Derby. In the Summer of 2007, he left Derby to join Newport as Professor of Photography.

• Academic and Professional Qualifications :
  • PhD History and Theory of Art, The University of Kent (1994)
  • MA History and Theory of Art, The University of Kent (1990). 
  • Postgraduate Diploma Fine Art Photography, Glasgow School of Art, 1988
  • Fine Art BA (Hons), Exeter College of Art and Design, 1987. 
    
    
• Professional Bodies and Memberships : UK and European Review Editor for Photography and Culture: Berg, since 2007. 
  
  
• Research Expertise or Interest : Durden has an established reputation as a writer on photography and has published over a hundred reviews and essays on the subject.  He writesregularly on photography for Sourcemagazine and also occasionally reviews for Frieze.  Durden is also an artist. Since 1997, as part of the artists’ group Common Culture he has exhibited regularly both nationally and internationally. Common Culture's art work has involved sculpture, performance, photography and video. 
  
  
• Research Supervision : 14 doctorates tocompletion, including Olivia M. da Silva, In The Net (2000); Jane Fletcher, The Way She Looks: Robert Thompson Crawshay’sPhotographs of his Daughter, Rose Harriette(2002); Peter Day, Invisible Boundaries(2007), Nikos Panayotopoulos, Terra Cognita: The Western HegemonicRepresentations of Greece Through the Case of Athens (2008); Yannis Kontos, Beyond Photojournalism, (2011).      
  
  
• Research Degree Examiner Appointments :
  Postgraduate external examining roles at Sotheby’s, Photography MA, and University of Kent, Fine Art MA.  External examiner for Westminster BA (Hons) Photography and Univesrity of Kent, Fine Art BA (Hons).  Examined PhDs at University of Ulster; De Montfort University, Leicester; St Andrews; Loughborough; Newport; St Martins and Dublin Institute of Technology.     
  
  
• Publications :
  • Common Culture exhibited in the Shanghai Biennale in 2006 and Manifesta, Murcia, 2010/11. Counter Culture II, a major site-specific installation is on show at the National Museum, Cardiff, 2011-12.  Early video work was included in a purposely-designed book, Pop Trauma, published by Void in Derry, 2006. With David Campbell from Common Culture, Durden co-wrote Variable Capital, Liverpool University Press, 2007.  The book looked at art’s relation to consumerism from Neo Geo to the present and was linked to an exhibition that they curated for the Bluecoat, Liverpool, in May 2008. 
    Select publications include an essay on Sophy Rickett for her Steidl/Photoworks book, 2005;
  • essays on Idris Khan for Next Level, 2006;
  • essays on Chris Killip and Michael Schmidt for the book which accompanied the Barbican exhibition, In the Face of History, 2006;
  • an essay on Melanie Friend’s Border Country for Belfast Exposed Gallery, 2007,
  • an essay on Peter Fraser for his monograph Lost for Words, 2010;
  • on Luc Delahaye for Picturing Atrocity eds. Geoffrey Batchen, Mick Gidley et al. Reaktion, 2011;
  • interview with Tod Papageorge in his book Core Curriculum, Aperture, 2011, 
  • essays on John Szarkowski, Brian O’Doherty and Victor Burgin for Routledge’s forthcoming 50 Key Art History Texts.   He is completing a major study of photography from the 1960s to the present, Photography Today, for Phaidon Press and editing a book for Routledge, 50 Key Writers on Photography.
    
    
• Public Engagement Activities and Esteem Indicators :
  • 2011  The Authority of Authenticity: Tracey Emin, Hayward Gallery, London.
  • Every Real Moment: Time in the Art of Andy Warhol, Co-organised this one-day symposium with Dr Alexander Graf at Newport School of Art, Media and Design. Speakers included Jean Wainwright, David Campbell, Ian Walker, Lisa Otty, Stephen Bull, Kieran Lyons, Kim Knowles. 
  • Newport and John Hansard Gallery, Southampton. 
  • 2010  Artes Mundi 4, public talk on this international exhibition, Cardiff City Museum. 
  • 2010  In Conversation: Peter Fraser, Ffotogallery:         Cardiff.
  • 2010  Documentary Pictorial, Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London.
  • 2009  This is America, as part of the Rosto Transversal conference in Porto 2-6 November.
  • 2009  An in-conversation with Professor Carol Mavor at Wolverhampton City Art Gallery, in relation to a solo show by Vered Lahav. 
  • 2009  Art Director, Global Landscape, Visual March, Prespes, University of Western Macedonia, Greece.
  • 2009  The Stephen Bann Effect, June 2009, University of Bristol.
  • 2008  Photography and Consumer Culture, Fotomuseum, Antwerp. 
  • 2008  Excess and Exploitation— Transgressions Symposium,    Newport, (organised and presented at this conference). 
  • 2007  Reading Photographs in Crisis, University of Leeds.
  • 2007  On Photography Theory, Leuven, Belgium.