Dr. Alasdair Foster is a writer, award-winning curator, and publisher of Talking Pictures – interviews with photographers around the world. He has twenty years’ experience heading national arts institutions in Europe and Australia, and over thirty-five years of working in the public cultural sector (both as a board member and as an employee).
CAREER HIGHLIGHTS
Alasdair Foster was the founding director of Fotofeis, the award-winning international biennale of photo-based art in Scotland (1991–1997) before moving to Australia to take up the position of director of the Australian Centre for Photography (1998–2011). He was, until his retirement in 2022, Professor of Culture in Community Wellbeing at The University of Queensland, and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Art at RMIT University, Melbourne.
He began his career in the documentary film industry working for Films of Scotland, a company initiated by the legendary John Grierson, before establishing a successful photographic business (1980-1990). His educational background is in photography, natural philosophy, history and film, and he has worked as an artist, curator, writer, editor, researcher, policy advisor and commercial photographer.
GLOBALLY CONNECTED
Alasdair Foster was Ambassador for the Asia-Pacific PhotoForum, a founding member of the International Network of Photography Centres and co-founded the Association of International Photo-festival Directors (now the Festival of Light). He has served on the editorial panel of Black Flash magazine (Canada) and was an international advisor to Fotofo (the international photography festival in Bratislava). In 2011 he was Academic Consultant to the Pingyao International Photography Festival (the first non-Chinese advisor to China’s largest and longest running photo event).
POLICY AND PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP
A former president of the Contemporary Art Organisations of Australia and chair of the Conference for European Photographers, he has served on the boards of the SALVO (Scottish Arts Lobby to Central Government) and NAVA (the National Association of the Visual Arts, Australia), and on the advisory panels to the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (UK), the National Arts and Tourism Conference (Scotland) and the National Exhibition Touring Service NSW (Australia). He was the contemporary visual art representative on NVACN (National Visual Arts and Craft Network, Australia which successfully lobbied for a significant increase in funding for the visual arts in Australia.
INTERNATIONAL CURATOR
Alasdair Foster has organised several hundred exhibitions including major presentations in The National Gallery of Thailand, Bangkok; Chobi Mela festival (Bangladesh); Brighton Festival (England’s largest arts festival), Samstag Museum, Adelaide (Australia); Photographers’ Gallery, London (England); Fotofestival Naarden (Netherlands); Photoquai, Paris (France); Pingyao International Photography Festival (China); Shilpakala Academy, Dhaka (Bangladesh); Museum of Photography, Seoul (Republic of Korea); Aberdeen Art Gallery (Scotland); Singapore Art Museum, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Taipei (Taiwan).
WRITER AND EDITOR
Alasdair Foster has contributed to a number of books including Behold the Man: the male nude in photography (Stills 1988); Addressing the Forbidden (Stills 1992), Photographica Australis (ACP, 2002); BLINK (Phaidon 2002); Ray Cook – Diary of a Fortunate Man (QCP 2007), Erwin Olaf (Aperture 2008), Edward Burtynsky – Minescapes (WAM 2009), Imagining the Everyday [China] (ACP 2010), Polixeni Papapetrou: Tales of Elsewhere (ACP 2011) and Ballarat International Foto Biennale catalogue (2011).
He has written for newspapers, magazines, journals and catalogues in many parts of the world.
Alasdair Foster was managing editor of Photofile, Australia’s leading photomedia art magazine (1998-2008) and editor of Photofile in 2003 and 2006-07.
ACADEMIC RESEARCHER
Alasdair Foster’s academic research explored a radical approach to public policy for the arts focused on shared creation and active participation.
