Meet Our Team - Women of Photography

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Yvette Hamilton is an Australian interdisciplinary artist and academic of Mauritian descent. She is a Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art at Sydney College of the Arts, University of Sydney, and has been a practising artist for more than fifteen years.

Her research and expanded practice probe the limits and expectations of representation within photography, exploring the ontological paradoxes inherent in the medium. This inquiry is underpinned by sustained material experimentation with photographic processes—past, present, and potential futures—and a commitment to sustainable, collaborative practice. Awarded the 2024 Art Association of Australia and New Zealand PhD Prize (Practice-led), Hamilton investigates photography’s thresholds of appearance, disappearance, and re-imagination across artistic, scientific, and philosophical contexts.

She leads Imaging Sustainability: Embodied Experiments in Art and Science, an interdisciplinary art–science project developing plant-based photographic “eco-developers” in partnership with chemists and community darkrooms. Her Scholarship of Teaching and Learning projects, including Manifesto as Method and Contact, exemplify innovative, practice-led pedagogy that integrates visual arts, research, and reflective practice.

Hamilton’s outputs span peer-reviewed publications, interdisciplinary collaborations, and a substantial record of nationally and internationally recognised exhibitions. Her work has been shown at the Pingyao International Festival of Photography (China); Lewisham Arthouse and Equivalent Behaviour Space (London); Perth Centre for Photography; Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre; and Hazelhurst Regional Gallery. She has been a finalist in the Bowness Photography Prize, Mullins Conceptual Photography Prize, Blake Prize, Josephine Ulrick & Win Schubert Award, Paramor Prize, Fisher’s Ghost Art Prize, Meroogal Women’s Art Prize, and Grace Cossington Smith Award.

Francesca is a photographic historian whose research focuses on photomechanical processes and the use of photography in scientific contexts, with particular attention to material culture and experimental practices. She holds a PhD in Photographic History and Visual Culture from De Montfort University (UK) and currently lectures in Photographic History at LABA Firenze. From 2025, she is an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and in the same year, she was awarded the Nuncius Prize. Leading institutions, including the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, the British Society for the History of Science, the Royal Historical Society, the Association for Art History, and the Photography Network, have supported her work. She has published in peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes and has presented her research at international academic conferences.  Beyond academia, Francesca collaborates with international institutions on projects involving photographic archives and collections, focusing on cataloguing, digitisation, and exhibition development.  A full list of her publications and academic presentations can be found on her website: https://francescastrobino.com/

Sarah French is Curatorial Fellow in Photography, supported by The Bern Schwartz Family Foundation at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. As part of this two-year post in the V&A’s Photographs Section, she has supported exhibitions, acquisitions and public programmes. She is currently developing a display about the periodical Sun Artists (1889-1891), which includes the work of Julia Margaret Cameron and Eveleen Myers. She is independently cataloguing and research the RPS’s International Exhibition of 1898.

In 2024, Sarah completed her PhD, a Collaborative Doctoral Award between the University of Sussex and Hastings Museum and Art Gallery. This contextualised the collections of the travel writer, collector and photographer Annie Brassey (1839-1887) within a feminist and decolonial framework. One output of this was the exhibition 'Photographs of a Victorian Voyage: From Annie Brassey’s Collection' (Hastings Museum, 2022-2023).

Dr. Karen Barber is a curator and art historian specializing in the history and theory of photography and Modern art. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Art History and Director of Cade Art Gallery at Anne Arundel Community College. Dr. Barber is also a contributing co-editor for twentieth-century photography at Smarthistory/Khan Academy, and works to expand its coverage of women photographers. Her research explores interwar photography, photobooks, photographic exhibitions, and photography as it relates to Native America within the context of, and as a means of upsetting, traditional settler colonialist narratives. She has also worked in significant photography collections in numerous American art museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art. 

Kimberly Donnelly is a Professor of Art History at Grand Rapids Community College in Michigan. She earned an ABD and Masters of Philosophy at The Grad Center of the City University of New York, focusing on German Dada as well as Neue Sachlichkeit. Currently teaching the Histories of Modern Art, Architecture, Interior Design and Photography, she is dedicated to amplifying the awareness of the future generations about the important contributions that women and people of color have made to art and art history.

Professor of Liberal Arts, Gretchen Gasterland-Gustafsson earned a Ph.D. in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society. Her dissertation was titled Design for Living: German and Swedish Design in the Early Twentieth Century. 

She has a Fil.Lic. in art history from Lunds University in Sweden, where she focused on contemporary art and social consciousness, specifically in the work of Adrian Piper, David Hammons, and Glenn Ligon. She was brought to Sweden on a Fulbright scholarship for a project centered on Swedish Emigration to Minnesota. She also holds an MFA in printmaking from Cranbrook Academy of Art. 

Gasterland-Gustafsson is currently the head of costume design for Out on a Limb Dance, chairs the board at Soo Visual Art Center, and serves on the Second Shift Studio Space board. She collaborates with local artists on various projects involving both writing and making.

Damon Stanek is an art historian specializing in contemporary art and theory, photography, and cinema studies. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities including Parsons the New School for Design and CUNY City College. Stanek's writing has been published in Art in America, Afterimage, and InReview. His ongoing research, entitled Seeing the Light, discusses the emergence of projected images in museum and gallery spaces and examines the modes of circulation for artists' films and videos. He is currently in the process of editing a documentary film about the political economy of creative musicians entitled No Place Left to Play.

Dr. Michael Pritchard has a practical knowledge of studio and location photography, b/w darkroom processing and printing, and digital photography. He joined Christie’s, the fine art auction house, as a photography specialist in 1986 and grew auctions of cameras and photographic equipment and associated material, setting many world auction records. He was also an auctioneer, and became a Christie’s Director and International Business Director for collectibles across the company. In 2007 he became a consultant for Christie’s working on a new cataloguing and property control system.

He also undertook a PhD in history of photography between 2007 and 2010. His thesis examined photographic manufacturing and retailing from 1839-1914. He has taught history of photography at MA level at De Montfort University and catalogued and organised the Kodak Historical Collection at the British Library for public access.

Michael was recruited to the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) in 2011 as Chief Executive, becoming Director of Programmes from 2018-2023. During his tenure he brought a renewed public profile for the RPS and oversaw an expansion in its public activities, not least growing its membership to the largest in its history. The RPS moved in 2019 to a new building with public spaces that introduced an enhanced public exhibition, education and events programmes. During the pandemic the public programmes pivoted to online delivery, and subsequently to a hybrid model, to reach new audiences.