Olga Smith is an art historian, specialising in contemporary art. Her research interests include photography and new imaging technologies, interchanges between art and intellectual ideas, cultural memory and, representations of landscape and environmental cultures.
A graduate of the University of Cambridge (BA, MPhil, PhD), Olga Smith has been a recipient of postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Warwick (Horizon 2020) and Humboldt University of Berlin, and has held positions at the University of St Andrews and Tate Gallery, London. She is currently a holder of a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (No 101023548).
Curriculum vitae
EDUCATION
- University of Cambridge, Ph.D., History of Art.
- École Normale Supérieure Paris, Residential Studentship.
- University of Cambridge, M.Phil., European Literature and Culture. Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages.
- University of Cambridge, B.A., Modern and Medieval Languages (French and Russian). Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages.
PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS
- University of Vienna, Individual Fellowship Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions. From 2021.
- Institute of Advanced Studies, UCL, Visiting Research Fellow. 2021.
- WIRL Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND Fellow (Horizon 2020), Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick. 2017-2020.
- Institut national de l’histoire de l’art, Paris, Visiting Fellowship. 2016.
- Postdoctoral Fellow. Institut für Kunst- und Bildgeschichte), Humboldt University of Berlin. 2014-2017.
- Curator of Public Programmes, Tate Galleries, London.
- Teaching Fellow, School of Art History, University of St Andrews.
Publikationsverzeichnis
PUBLICATIONS
Books
- Between Theory and Practice: Contemporary Photography in France. Leuven University Press. 2022. Received awards from Österreichische Forschungsgemeinschaft and Association for Art History.
Edited Volumes
- Guest Editor, Special Issue ‘Photography and Landscape,’ journal Photographies. Vol. 12. 2019.
- (with Peter Collier and Anna Elsner) Anamnesia: Private and Public Memory in Modern French Culture (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009), 359 p.
Articles (peer-reviewed)
- ‘Décentrer la perspective humaine: Le paysage dans l’Anthropocène’, in Danièle Méaux and Jonathan Tichit (eds), Arts Contemporains et Anthropocène (Paris: Éditions Hermann, 2022).
- ‘Exhibition as Film, Film as Exhibition: Philippe Parreno and the Moving Image in the Museum.’ MIRAJ: Moving Image Review & Art Journal, 11: 1 (2022), pp. 34-53.
- ‘Jean Baudrillard and the Challenge of Photography’. MAST: The Journal of Media Art, Study and Theory, 2: 1 (2021), pp. 113-130. ISSN 2691-1566.
- ‘Introduction: Photography and Landscape’. Photographies, Special Issue ‘Photography and Landscape’, 12: 2 (June 2019), pp. 137-142.
- ‘The Reality of the Place Where We Live: Interview with John Davies’, Photographies, Special Issue ‘Photography and Landscape’, 12: 2 (June 2019), pp. 143-153.
- ‘Making Visible: Representing Violence, Resistance and Everyday Life on the Margins’, Photographies, 11: 2-3, June 2018, pp. 235-250.
- ‘Authorless Pictures: Photography in Christian Boltanski’s Early Work (1969-1975)’, Art History, 40: 3 (June 2017), pp. 634-657.
- (with Dina Gusejnova), ‘Die Ästhetik des Zastoi. Boris Mikhailov als Fotograf des letztensowjetischen Jahrzehnts’, Fotogeschichte, 136: 35 (Summer 2015), pp. 43-51.
- ‘The Spaces of Containment: Valérie Jouve’s Urban Portraits’, Nottingham French Studies, 53: 2 (July 2014), pp. 155-168.
Book Chapters & Reference Works
- Co-authored, with Andrew Patrizio, ‘Ecocriticism and Eco-Phenomenologies’ and ‘Visualising Catastrophe and Extinction Studies’, in Barry Sandywell and Martin Hand (eds), The Bloomsbury Encyclopaedia of Visual Culture (London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming in 2024).
- ‘Interview with Olga Smith,’ in Lucy Soutter and Duncan Woolridge (eds), Writer Conversations (London: 1000 words, 2022).
- ‘Climate Migration,’ in Christina Baldacci, Pietro Daniel Omodeo and Shaul Bassi (eds), Venice and the Anthropocene: An Ecocritical Guide (Venice: Wetlands Books, 2022). In print.
- ‘Dafna Talmor: Manipulated Landscapes,’ in Dafna Talmor, Constructed Landscapes (Fw: Books, 2020), pp. 33-39.
- ‘Plaines et platitudes: les réinventions du paysage photographique dans l’œuvre de Jean-Marc Bustamante et Joachim Brohm’, in Pierre-Henry Frangne and Patricia Limido (eds), Les inventions photographiques du paysage, du XIXe siècle à nos jours (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2016), pp. 49-59.
- ‘Joachim Schmid: Other People’s Photographs’, in Il Presente. Fotografia: Festival Internazionale di Roma (Quodlibet, Rome, 2015), pp. 140-142
- ‘Pierre Huyghe’s travels with Edgar Allan Poe’, in Jörg von Brincken, Ute Gröbel and Irina Schulzki (eds), Fictions/Realities. New Forms and Interactions (München: Martin Meidenbauer, 2012), pp. 85-100.
- (with Dina Gusejnova), ‘The Social Medium: An Introduction’, EitherAnd, The National Media Museum, London, http://eitherand.org/social-medium/social-medium-how-photography-shapes-world/
- ‘Philippe Parreno, 00 PM’, in Tate Summaries (2014): https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks
- ‘Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Séance de Shadow II (bleu)’, in Tate Summaries (2014): https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks
- ‘Hoaxer’s voyage: Pierre Huyghe’s A Journey that wasn’t’, in Manon Mathias, Maria O’Sullivan, Ruth Vorstman (eds), Display and Disguise (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011), pp. 205-222.
- ‘“A hollow image of the person”: objects of memory in the art of Christian Boltanski’, in Olga Smith, Peter Collier and Anna Elsner, Anamnesia: Private and Public Memory in Modern French Culture (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 117-130.
Reviews (selected)
- Hilde van Gelder, Ground Sea: Photography and the Right to Be Reborn. Forthcoming in Focales, No. 7, 2023.
- Karl Kusserow (ed.), Picture Ecology: Art and Ecocriticism in Planetary Perspective. Journal 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual, No. 3 (2022), pp. 709-714. DOI: 10.11588/xxi.2022.3.90397.
- Danièle Méaux, Géo-photographies : une approche renouvelée des territoires. History of Photography, Vol. 41, no. 2, (2017), pp. 209-211.
Aktivitäten
- Association for Art History (UK)
- AICA International Association of Art Critics
- European Association for the Advancement of Science and Technology
- Marie Curie Alumni Association
- Ph: The Photography Research Network
- Vienna Anthropocene Network
- Advisory Board of Focales
- Expert Peer-Reviewer for Focales, Arts, photographies and 21: Inquiries into Art, History, and the Visual – Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte und visuellen Kultur