Panelists:

MAYA BENTON

Maya Benton is a curator at the International Center of Photography in New York, where she has worked since 2008. She has curated numerous traveling exhibitions, lectures widely, and is a frequent contributor to magazines and museum catalogs, where she writes about photography, Israeli art, and Jewish visual and material culture. Her 2013 exhibition, Roman Vishniac Rediscovered, is traveling internationally through 2022. The show was heralded as a “revelation” by The New Yorker, ARTnews, Time, the Financial Times and the Economist, and was praised in more than 300 international press outlets. The catalogue was recently named Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and the Krauszna-Krause Book Award, Europe’s top prize for photography books, and was included on many “best of the year” book lists. She is also the author of the French monograph, Roman Vishniac.Maya is currently organizing a traveling exhibition of photographer Gillian Laub’s contemporary images of segregated proms and race based violence in the American South. She is a graduate of Brown University, Harvard University and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Her next book will be an anthology of seminal texts on Jews and Photography published by Aperture.

EMILY BIERMAN

Emily Bierman joined Sotheby’s Photographs department in 2007. Ms. Bierman has been directly involved with the department’s numerous important single-owner collections, including The Quillan Collection of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Photographs; Photographs from the Polaroid Collection; A Show of Hands: Photographs from the Collection of Henry Buhl; The Modern Image; The Inventive Eye: Photographs from a Private Collection; Robert Frank: The Americans, The Ruth and Jake Bloom Collection; and the record-shattering sale of 175 Masterworks to Celebrate 175 Years of Photography: Photographs from Joy of Giving Something Foundation. She has also contributed catalogue entries for lots in other Sotheby’s auctions, most notably the collection of photographs in the sale of The John Stryker Collection: Masterworks of European Modernism. As Head of Department, she is the lead business getter for the department’s biannual auctions. Her broad range of activity within the department also includes professional writing, research, and all aspects of auction estimate, fair market value, charitable donation, and insurance appraisals.Ms. Bierman has lectured on both the history of the photographs market and on contemporary color photography. Ms. Bierman is a graduate of Middlebury College, Vermont, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in the History of Art and Architecture and in Film and Media Cultures. She is a USPAP certified appraiser.

A.D. COLEMAN

A.D. Coleman has published 8 books and more than 2000 essays on photography and related subjects. Formerly a columnist for the Village Voice, the New York Times, and the New York Observer, Coleman has contributed to such periodicals as ARTnews, Art On Paper, and Technology Review. His syndicated essays on mass media, new communication technologies, art, and photography have been featured in such periodicals as Juliet Art Magazine (Italy), European Photography (Germany), and Art Today (China). His work has been translated into 21 languages and published in 30 countries.Since 1995, Coleman has served as Publisher and Executive Director of The Nearby Café (nearbycafe.com), a multi-subject electronic magazine where his widely read blog on photography, Photocritic International, appears. He also founded and directs the Photography Criticism CyberArchive (photocriticism.com), the most extensive online database ever created of writing about photography by authors past and present. With John Alley, he co-directs The New Eyes Project, an online resource for everyone teaching photography to young people.Coleman who lectures, teaches and publishes widely both here and abroad has appeared on NPR, PBS, CBS and the BBC. A Getty Museum Guest Scholar and a Fulbright Senior Scholar, and a recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Hasselblad Foundation, he was honored in 1996 as the Ansel and Virginia Adams Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Creative Photography.

DEIRDRE DONOHUE

Deirdre Donohue is an artist, librarian and educator who has worked in New York cultural institutions for 30 years: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim and ICP, where she is the Stephanie Shuman Director of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections.
Deirdre is a graduate, and on the faculty of the School of Information and Library Science at Pratt Institute, and also at the ICP/Bard MFA Program in Advanced Photographic Studies. She is on the Executive Board of ARLIS/NA New York [the Art Libraries Society] for a 3 year term 2012-2015.
Deirdre’s art work has been exhibited at Queens Art Center, New York Public Library’s Art Wall on Third, ICP’s Rita K. Hillman Gallery and The Metropolitan Museum Art Staff Exhibitions.
In 2014 she was awarded the Andrew Cahan Travel Award by ARLIS/NA [Art Libraries Society] and in 2015 she was awarded the ICP Spotlights Legacy Award.

ROBERT GURBO

Robert Gurbo is curator of the Estate of André Kertész and the André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation.  As a young photographer himself, Gurbo began working for André Kertész in the late 1970’s, creating a storage system for his negative and print archive, making slides for lectures, building furniture to house Kertész’s growing library as well as printed for Kertész occasionally.  After Kertész’s passing in 1985, his estate hired Gurbo to inventory the entire archive and organize his negatives and correspondence for transfer to the French Ministry of Culture. In 1986, Gurbo was appointed curator.  In this role, he has organized and curated exhibitions, contributed essays to numerous catalogues, and collaborated with many museums, institutions and galleries.

He is co-author of the catalog that accompanied the 2005 National Gallery exhibit, Andre Kertész, published by Princeton University Press.  He is editor and author of Andre Kertész: The Early Years, and Andre Kertész: The Polaroids and he organized the reissue of Kertész’s seminal book, On Reading.  He is currently working on a new book of Kertész’s Self Portraits.  Gurbo defines his role as curator as something he was born to do.  “While I always liked photography, I became obsessed with Andre Kertész’s work at age 16 when I received a small book of his photographs as a gift.  That I actually met and worked with him was beyond my wildest dreams.  My fascination, understanding and  love for the man and his photographs has only grown over the 38 years I have been blessed to work with this incredible archive. “

W.M. HUNT

W.M. Hunt is a New York-based a champion of photography: collector, curator and consultant.  He has organized shows from his collections: “Hunt’s Three Ring Circus: American Groups Before 1950” in New York with the ICP as well as in Arles, Bologna and Houston.  Highlights from the collection featured in his book “The Unseen Eye: Photographs from the Unconscious” have been exhibited at the Eastman House and Arles, Musée de l’Elysée and FOAM.A dealer for many years, he was a principle in Hasted Hunt and Ricco/Maresca Gallery and responsible for introducing many major contemporary artists in the US.  Hunt has been a judge or nominator for the Lucies, World Press Photo, SONY WPO, Prix Pictet, Getty Images, etc.  He has been a longtime board member of the W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund, AIPAD (Association of International Photography and Art Dealers), and The Center for Photography at Woodstock. He also teaches at the School of Visual Arts, Aperture and ICP and for many years he has produced the “Your Picture …” panels for PDN.   He is a frequent contributor to L’Oeil de la Photographie and the author of many essays for artist’s monographs.He loves photography.  It changed his life.  It gave him one.

LISA McCARTY

Lisa McCarty is a curator and photographer based in Durham, North Carolina.McCarty has held curatorial positions in archives, libraries, galleries, museums, and private collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum Library, the Peace Corps Archive, George Mason University, The Nasher Museum of Art, Cassilhaus Gallery & Collection, The Center for Documentary Studies and Duke University’s Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where she is currently curator of the Archive of Documentary Arts.McCarty received a MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts from Duke University and exhibits her photographs and moving image work internationally. Most recently she has participated in exhibitions and screenings at The Ogden Museum of Southern Art, Chicago Photography Center, Griffin Museum of Photography, Houston Center for Photography, Asheville Art Museum, the American University Museum, the New York Film Festival, Cairo Video Festival, and Alchemy Film & Moving Image Festival.

EUGENE MOPSIK

Eugene Mopsik has a long and distinguished record as an advocate for photographers and other visual artists and served as the Executive Director of the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) from 2003 to 2014. He is a passionate supporter of artists’ rights, earning him a high level of respect from artists’ organizations, publishers, industry partners, lawmakers and government agencies in the US and globally. Mopsik has participated in US Patent and Trademark Office hearings on Copyright Policy, Creativity, and Innovation in the Information Economy and delivered papers on Copyright and Collective Licensing at the Columbia University Kernochan Center.He has presented testimony to the House Committee on the Judiciary regarding the Role of Copyright, and participated in a symposium at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology on the Future of Copyright. Currently, Mopsik advises American Photographic Artists (APA) on advocacy issues and serves on the boards of ASCRL (American Society for Collective Rights Licensing), The Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Copyright Alliance and the PLUS Coalition (Picture Licensing Universal System).  Prior to his position at ASMP, his career was as a successful Philadelphia corporate/industrial photographer having graduated from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

ROBIN MOORE

Robin Moore has worked with creative people her entire life. Her father was the photographer Peter Moore, known primarily for his work documenting Fluxus, Judson dance, and other events in the New York avant garde of the 1960s. Her first husband was a prominent Washington DC area artist who died in 2006. After managing his estate for several years, and informally supporting dozens of widowed people in similar situations, Robin set up a consulting business to help families live well with artistic legacies of all kinds.Today she consults with artists, photographers, collectors, writers, as well as their families and other professionals, to plan, support, and maximize their businesses and their new lives. Among her services: estate planning; inventories and business summaries; marketing, including pricing and social media; and strategies that take into account tax consequences, emotional needs, and the strengths of each unique body of work and the individuals charged with their care.Robin holds a BA from Oberlin College and an MBA from Georgetown University. Learn more at RobinMooreLegacies.com.

JOHN PELOSI

John Pelosi is a transactional attorney with a litigation background in 1st Amendment, copyright, trademark and commercial litigation. His varied personal interests and professional experience have resulted in a practice representing influential artists and artist estates, creative and entrepreneurial people in media and entertainment, cultural “Icons” and Nickelodeon Superstars, as well as book publishers. Mr. Pelosi provides services in contract and transactional matters as well as advice, counseling, aggressive rights protection, and dispute prosecution and resolution. Areas of particular interest and specialization are intellectual property licensing and protection, photography and other fine art, publishing, television and music.Mr. Pelosi was a litigation associate at Shea & Gould, an associate at Frankfurt Garbus Klein & Selz, and a Director of Legal Affairs at Polygram Holdings prior to founding Pelosi & Wolf in 1997. He received his JD from Columbia Law School (1988) and his BA from Colgate University (1985) graduating Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude.

STEPHEN PERLOFF 

Stephen Perloff is the founder and editor of The Photo Review, a critical journal of international scope publishing since 1976, and editor of The Photograph Collector, the leading source of information on the photography art market. He has taught photography and the history of photography at numerous Philadelphia-area colleges and universities. He has curated more than a score of exhibitions and was the recipient of the Colin Ford Award for Curatorship from the Royal Photographic Society in 2012.

His photographs have appeared in numerous exhibitions and reside in many museum and private collections, including those of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the George Eastman Museum, the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Lehigh University, Haverford College, and the University of North Dakota.

His book North Dakota was published by wilburerditions in April 2016. An exhibition of this work will was held at Santa Bannon Fine Art in Bethlehem, PA, during the InVision Photography Festival in November 2016.

He has been widely praised for his writing about the photography art market, including his detailed auction reports, and for his extensive reporting on major stories like the exposure of the production of fraudulent Lewis Hine prints. His articles have been reproduced in dozens of other journals and he has been called on as an expert to comment on the state of the photography market for publications such as The New York Times, The Toronto Globe & Mail, The Wall Street Journal, Photo District News, and the New York Observer.

DOUGLAS I. SHEER

Douglas I. Sheer was a co-founder of ARTISTS TALK ON ART, the art world’s longest running and most prolific aesthetic panel discussion series. For over 43 years he has served as Chairman of the series that has presented more than 6,000 artists in more than 1,400 panels or dialogs, all of them recorded. That archive was recently acquired by the Archives of American Art of the Smithsonian Institution and represents the single largest such acquisition of audio, video and still image materials (and related papers) ever by A of AA. Sheer was responsible for the preservation, organizing, indexing, digitization planning and coordination with Smithsonian of the archive. Some notable artists and critics appearing have included: Arman, Will Barnet, Louise Bourgeois, Judy Chicago, Christo, Robert Mapplethorpe, Marisol, Mary Ellen Mark, Larry Rivers, Irving Sandler, Andres Serrano and Martha Wilson.

Sheer is also a technology researcher and journalist. Since 1982, he has run D. I. S. Consulting Corporation, the broadcast and video industry’s leading research supplier, a strategic partner of the NAB Show. Syndicated and custom studies have covered video camcorders, servers, displays, recorders, microphones, still cameras, printers, drones, lighting, recording media, lenses, graphics, storage, switchers, transmitters, VR, and much more. In all, more than 1,800 clients, mainly manufacturers, have been served including: Apple, Adobe, ARRI, Avid, Blackmagic, Canon, Eastman Kodak, Fujinon/Fujifilm, Grass Valley, Harris, Harmonic, Leica, Lowel-Lite, Mamiya, Maxell, Nikon, Panasonic, Panavision, Pentax, Polaroid, Sachtler, Sony, Tenba, Toshiba, the Vitec Group, Yamaha and Zeiss.

Author of over 1,500 technology-based articles, white papers and research reports, his work has appeared in 13 languages in more than 80 countries. Publications have included: Videography, Millimeter, TVBEurope, TV Technology, Arabian Business, Millecaneli, Produ, BROADCAST, BroadcastPro M-E, China A-V, Asia-Pacific Broadcasting, The Boston Globe, The IBC Daily, Radio World, The Broadcast Asia Daily, TV Technology Japan, Digital Studio India, The NAB Daily and many more. He has also edited and published books and directories including: BME’s ENG/EFP/EPP Handbook (1980) and the Photography A-V Handbook (1981). He has been a presenter and lecturer, worldwide. In 1980 he programmed the technology track for SPE held in Asilomar, CA.

He is Governor (through 2018) of the New York Region of the Society of Motion Pictures & Television Engineers (SMPTE).

He is the archivist of the estate and collection of the pinhole photographer, Marcia C. Sheer.

ANDREW SMITH 

Andrew Smith started his photography business in 1974, in Santa Fe, working with prints by Edward Curtis. In 1975, as a member and eventual director of the Center of the Eye Photography Collaborative, he began to work with a variety of contemporary artists. He graduated from the University of New Mexico law school in 1982 and practices law for 3 years while engaged in his photography business. He opened a public gallery, Andrew Smith Gallery, Inc. in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1984, moving the gallery to Santa Fe in 1986.

Over the last 35 years the Andrew Smith Gallery in Santa Fe, has presented over 150 exhibitions and hosted over 1,000,000 visitors. It has bought, sold and brokered the sale of approximately 200,000 photographs, worth more than $120,000,000.00. He has worked with and represented many hundreds of photographers during this time

The gallery is best known by collectors and museums as the international source for significant 19th and 20^th century photographs of the American.

In about 2010 he initiated his “Emerging Artists on Medicare” program to assist elder and elderly photographers intelligently preserve and place their work.

LESLIE SQUYRES

Leslie Squyres, Senior Archivist and Head of the Laura Volkerding Study Center, Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, where she has worked as an archivist for over twenty-five years. She has been certified by the Academy of Certified Archivists since 1992. In the Volkerding Study Center, scholars compare and study rare books, fine print photographs, and archival collections. She oversees the Center’s Voices of Photography Collection of interviews and lectures with photographers, curators, and scholars. She shares the responsibility for the acquisition of archives that document the history of photography and has arranged and described several major Center archives including Ansel Adams, John Gutmann, and Garry Winogrand. “Soft Music and Harsh Bullets: The W. Eugene Smith Archive,” her presentation at the symposium, Order and Collapse: The Lives of Archives, at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, was published by the journal, Art and Theory, in 2016.

ALICE SACHS ZIMET

Alice Sachs Zimet is a collector, advisor, and educator who began to collect photography in 1985. Her collection of roughly 300 images includes 20th Century masters to the present. Zimet is Chair, Photography Collections Committee, Harvard Art Museums; board member, Magnum Foundation; and a member of the Acquisitions Committee, International Center of Photography.