Francis Hodgson

Francis Hodgson is Professor in the Culture of Photography, having established himself as a critical writer on photography.

His work has embraced both cultural and commercial aspects of photography and influenced the exhibiting and curation of photographs, with former roles including photography critic for the Financial Times, and Head of Photographs at Sotheby’s, London. Hodgson is also a co-founder of the leading photography prize the Prix Pictet (on which he has twice served as chairman of the panel of judges). He has also been the chairman of judges on the Sony World Photography Awards, judged the Jerwood Awards, D&AD, British Journal of Photography Awards and AoP awards among others.

He has published a number of monograph texts on photography, has lectured to a wide range of audiences — from academic and scholarly to the business community or those involved in collecting photographic prints. Hodgson has been invited to address a number of specialist forums in photography, including at the FOAM Museum in Amsterdam, the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, and the Rencontres Internationales d'Arles, and has often broadcast on television and radio. On the commercial side he has spoken at meetings of the British Association of Picture Libraries and Archives, of the Picture Agency Council of America, and at meetings of Association of International Photography Art Dealers. Hodgson was invited to give the inaugural keynote at the first British Photography Symposium organised by RedEye in 2009.