As one of the first European Photographic Institutions to establish a discrete digital programme and appoint a digital curator, The Photographers’ Gallery has been committed to questions concerning how cultural institutions should value and ‘curate’ digital photographic culture. The Gallery’s Media Wall (2012-present) has been a central platform for this research, facilitating new commissions, formats and experimental displays exploring a range of subjects from the economies of cat photography to contemporary photographic datasets such as ImageNet.

In 2015 we established the online platform Unthinking Photography and in 2019 launched Screen Walks to further explore the entanglement of screen, image and interface.

This work also informed a successful application to the Swiss National Science Foundation in 2018 to support the project “Curating Photography in the Networked Image Economy”, in partnership with Lucerne University of Applied Arts and Social Sciences (CH), Fotomuseum Winterthur (CH) and Foto Colectania (ES) with support from the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image, London South Bank University (UK) and the Computational Culture Lab, Australian National University. The project focuses on the problem of image curation in network culture, and how photographic institutions, social media users and computer scientists seek to address the problem of photographic ubiquity and its value. As such, it seeks to connect the previously disconnected fields of institutional photo curating, social media curating and computational curating.
 

Selected Activities & Publications

K.Sluis, M. De Mutiis & J. Uriate (forthcoming) You Must Not Call It Photography If This Expression Hurts You In: A Dekker (ed.) Digital Curating, Amsterdam: Valiz.

Screenwalks: An online programme of talks by artists visit screenwalks.com

Image Aesthetics at Scale: Web 2.0, Flickr and its Legacy [Online Roundtable] Wed 9 December: Bhautik Joshi & Markus Spiering in conversation with Katrina Sluis at The Photographers’ Gallery London.

K. Sluis (2020) Photography Must Be Curated!, Still Searching: A Platform for Contemporary Photographic Discourse. Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland. 15 September 2020. Available Online at:

Li, H. (2020) ‘If there is still a point to curating on social media, what is it?’, in Lovink, G. and Treske, A. (eds) Video Vortex Reader III: Inside the YouTube Decade. Hogeschool van Amsterdam, Lectoraat Netwerkcultuur.

Curating Social Media [Symposium] 12th & 13th September 2019, The Photographers’ Gallery. Speakers: Brian Droitcour (Art in America), Olia Lialina (artist), Felix Magal (artist), Anika Meier (curator), Olga Goriunova (scholar), Annet Dekker (curator), Hannah Ray (Instagram), Wolfgang Wild (Retronaut), Matthew Plummer- Fernandez (artist), Gaia Tedone (curator).

Katrina Sluis & Erica Scourti (2019) Reflections on commissioning “So Like You”’, Pivotal Moments in Developing Artistic Practice: Professional Development Models for Mid-Career Artists [conference] Space Studios & London Creative Network, Bethnal Green Town Hall, London UK, 20 Sept 2019

Artificial "Artificial Imaginations": Some provocations on curating 21st Century photography [Public Panel] 29th April 2019. Foto Colectania, Barcelona. Speakers: Mario Santamaria (artist), Jara Rocha (artist), Katrina Sluis.

Katrina Sluis (2019) Interviewed by Lewis Bush. 1000 Words Magazine.

Katrina Sluis (2018) ‘Desperately Seeking Audience: Hypercuration in the 21st Century’ Curating Machines: A Lecture Series on Creating & Curating in the Digital Age. Royal Holloway, Univ. of London. 24 May 2018.

Katrina Sluis (2018) ‘Done: The New Artefacts of Contemporary Photography’ [Panel Event] Foto Colectania Barcelona 13 Feb with Annet Dekker (University of Amsterdam) & Marco De Mutiis (Fotomuseum Winterthur)

Katrina Sluis (2018) ‘The Paradoxes of Digital Curating’ Encounters: Photography & Curation [Symposium] The Photographers’ Gallery and London College of Communication, University of the Arts London, 2 Jun 2018

Katrina Sluis (2016) ‘Image Consumption in an age of Google Analytics’, Capture and Consumption: images and digital culture, [Panel] Tate Modern, London, 6 May with speakers: James Bridle & Nick Waplington

Machines with Taste? Photography, Algorithms & Automated Curating [Public Panel] Speakers: Miriam Redi (Yahoo Labs), Appu Shaji (EyeEm), Mario Klingemann (Google). The Photographers’ Gallery, 17 March 2016

Katrina Sluis (2015) Know Your Bounce Rate: Image Curation in Computational Culture, College Art Association 103rd Annual Conference, 11–14 February 2015, New York.

Sluis, K. (2014) ‘Authorship, Collaboration, Computation: Into the Realm of Similar Images with Erica Scourti’, Photoworks Annual, pp. 151–159. Available: 

K. Sluis, C. Paul & J. Stallabrass (2013) The (Photographic) Canon After the Internet: Katrina Sluis in conversation with Christiane Paul and Julian Stallabrass in: Aperture No. 213, Winter 2013

Katrina Sluis (2013) Resistance to digital and digital resistance: curating the networked photograph, 19th International Symposium on Electronic Art, University of New South Wales, University of Sydney, ANAT (Australian Network of Art and Technology) 7 – 16 Jun, Sydney

‘Case Study 17: Curating the Networked Image, An Interview with Katrina Sluis’ In: A. Dewdney & P. Ride The Digital Media Handbook. 2013 London: Routledge.

Sluis, K. (2013) ‘Digital Encounters: Born in 1987: The Animated GIF’, Photoworks, 2 September. Available at: (Accessed: 28 April 2020).

Sluis, K. (2012) ‘Photography Curation Today (and Tomorrow)’, Source Magazine Issue 73 Winter 2012