Charlotte Cotton

Charlotte Cotton (born 1970) is an independent curator of and writer about photography.

She has held positions including Head of the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Head of Programming at The Photographers' Gallery, London, Creative Director at the National Media Museum, UK, Curator of Photography at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Curator in Residence at the Katonah Museum of Art, NY, and Curator in Residence for International Center of Photography’s new museum and events space, 250 Bowery.

Cotton has curated a number of exhibitions on contemporary photography and her publications include The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Imperfect Beauty, Then Things Went Quiet, Guy Bourdin, and Photography is Magic. She is also the founder of wordswithoutpictures.org (2008-9) and EitherAnd.org (2012). Words Without Pictures was published as a print and eBook by Aperture in 2010.

Cotton was born in the Cotswolds in England. She studied Art History at the University of Sussex in Brighton.

Cotton was curator of photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum from 1993 to 2004. She started working as an intern there in 1992. She curated many exhibitions of historical and contemporary photography at the museum including: 'Imperfect Beauty: the making of contemporary fashion photographs' (2000), 'Out of Japan' (2002), 'Stepping In and Out: contemporary documentary photography' (2003) and 'Guy Bourdin' (2003).

The Photograph as Contemporary Art provides an introduction to contemporary art-photography, identifying its most important features and themes and celebrating its exciting pluralism through an overview of its most important and innovative practitioners. The work of nearly 250 photographers is reproduced, from established artists such as Isa Genzken, Jeff Wall, Sophie Calle, Thomas Demand, Nan Goldin, and Sherrie Levine to emerging talents such Walead Beshty, Jason Evans, Lucas Blalock, Sara VanDerBeek, and Viviane Sassen.

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