Steve Edwards joined the Courtauld in April 2025 as Manton Professor of British Art and Director of the newly established Manton Centre for British Art, which hosts conferences, workshops and research lectures. He began teaching at the University of Derby and subsequently held professorships at the Open University, where he was also head of the art history department, and Birkbeck, University of London.
Steve attended state school and began working life as an apprentice in heavy industry, before changing direction and taking an art school degree in Fine Art. Having been attracted to art history by his undergraduate teacher Martin I Gaughan, he switched subject and undertook the MA in the Social History of Art at the University of Leeds with John Tagg and Griselda Pollock, and his PhD on nineteenth-century British photography at Portsmouth and Leeds with Adrian Rifkin and, for a period, the historian R.Q. Gray.
He researches history of photography, art and industrial culture, and critical art and theory since the 1970s. His books include: The Making of English Photography, Allegories (2006); Photography: A Very Short Introduction (2006); Martha Rosler, The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems (2012); and, with Professor Gail Day, Amphibious Realities: Allan Sekula鈥檚 Documentary Poetics (2025). He has also edited seven volumes of art history and social theory; he also regularly writes for international exhibition catalogues. Steve is currently completing a study of daguerreotype portraiture and the English middle class in the 1840s and 1850s. His research has been translated into twelve languages.
Steve has held visiting professorships at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and the University of Bourdeaux-Montaigne and has been allocated several grants and fellowships, including a research partnership with the University of S茫o Paulo and the Senior Fellowship awarded by the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art Studies. He is currently the chair of the editorial group for the Oxford Art Journal and a member of the editorial collective for the Historical Materialism book series (Brill/Haymarket).
Teaching
- MA: Victorian Afterlives (with Professor Lynda Nead).
Publications
Monographs
The Making of English Photography: Allegories, 2006.
Photography: A Very Short Introduction, 2006.
Martha Rosler. The Bowery in Two Inadequate Descriptive Systems, 2012.
Amphibious Realities: Allan Sekula’s Documentary Poetics, by Steve Edwards, Gail Day, 2025.
Edited volumes
Communards and Other Cultural Histories Essays by Adrian Rifkin, edited by Steve Edwards, 2016.
The Conspiracy of Modern Art by Luiz Renato Martins, edited by Steve Edwards, 2017.
Recent journal essays
鈥樷,听Notes from Below, October 2024:
鈥樷, Nonsite, 8th December 2021
鈥榃hy Pictures? From Art History to Business History and Back Again鈥,听History of Photography, 2020, Vol.44, No.1, pp.3-15.
鈥樷,听British Art Studies, No.18, November 2020: With three embedded short films.
鈥樷淏eard Patentee鈥: Daguerreotype Property and Authorship鈥,听Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 36, No. 3, 2013,pp.369-394. Republished as 鈥樷, Acervo: Revista Do Arquivo Nacional, Vol.32, No.2, 2019, pp.38-67.
Recent book chapters
鈥樷淭imes Carcass鈥: Art History, Temporality. and Capitalism鈥, Tijan Tunali & Brian Winkenweder eds, The Routledge Companion to Marxist art Histories, Routtledge, 2025, pp.146-61
(with Gail Day & Marina Vishmidt) 鈥楢rt鈥, Beverley Skeggs, Sara F. Farris, Alberto Toscano & Svenja Bromberg eds, The听Sage Handbook of Marxism, Vol.3, Sage, 2021, pp.747-765.
(with Gail Day) 鈥楧ifferential time and aesthetic form: uneven and combined capitalism in the work of Allan Sekula鈥, James Christie & Degirmencioglu eds, Cultures of Uneven and Combined Development, 2019, Brill, Leiden, pp.253-88.
Slightly different version published as 鈥溾楻ecoding the Sea鈥: Uneven and Combined Capitalism in the work of Allan Sekula (Telegraph Version)鈥 in Anne Chapman and Natalie Hume eds, Scrambled Images: Coding and Representation from the Nineteenth Century to the Present, Routledge, 2021,听pp.161-88.
鈥樷淒irty Realism鈥: Documentary Photography in 1970s Britain 鈥 a Maquette鈥, Malcolm Baker & Andrew Hemingway eds, Art as World Making: Critical Essays on Realism & Naturalism, Manchester University Press, 2018, pp.248-67.
鈥楢llan Sekula:听Fish Story鈥, Kunst und Politik Jahrbuch der Guernica-Gesellschaft, Icons of 20th-Century Political Art/Politische Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, Andrew Hemingway & Norbert Schneider eds.
Allan Sekula鈥檚 Chronotopes: Uneven and Combined Capitalism鈥, in H. Van Gelde ed., Ship of Fools/The Dockers Museum, Leuven University Press, 2015, pp.31-43 in French: 鈥楲es chronotopes d鈥橝llan Sekula: le capitalisme In茅gal et combin茅鈥; Edition 茅tablie par Hilde Van Gelde, Ship of Fools/The Dockers Museum, La Cri茅e centre d鈥檃rt contemporain, Frac Bretagne, 2015, pp.31-44; Republished on-line in , in Portuguese: 鈥極s Chron贸tops de Allan Sekula: capitalism desigual e combinado鈥, Organizado por Hilde
Van Gelde,听Ship of Fools/TheDockers Museum, Lumiar Cit茅/Maumaus, 2015, pp.31-55;in Italian: 鈥, Traduzioni Marxiste, September, 2016.
Exhibition Catalogues
鈥楾he Street & the Barricades: Demos and Document in Nineteenth-Century Photography鈥, Jorge Ribalta ed. Before Documentary, 1848-1917, Museum Reina Sofia, Madrid, 2022 (Proof stage) In English and Spanish. To accompany the exhibition听Before Documentary, 1848-1917,听Museum Reina Sofia, Madrid, November 2022.
鈥楶hotography, Industry, Work鈥, Paul Mellenthin and Olga Osadtschy eds,听Exposure Time: Photographs from the Collection Ruth and Peter Herzog, Kunstmuseum Basel/Christoph Marian Verlag, 2020, pp.268-81.
German: 鈥楩otografie, Industrie, Arbeit鈥, Herausgegeben von Paul Mellenthin und Olga Osadtschy, Belichtungszeit: Fotografien aus der Sammlung Ruth und Peter Herzog, Kunstmuseum Basel/Christoph Marian Verlag, 2020, pp.268-81.
Blog series
鈥榓in鈥, 5 Blogposts for Fotomuseum Wintherthur, 7th September-5th November 2017.
republished in Monthly Review on-line.
