Anna Van Lenten

I curate photography and write and edit fiction.

I run the bi-monthly Photo Series at The Half King in NYC (#hkphotoseries), and the cross-media exhibit series Surveillance, which has its second run this March, as Surveillance.02, in Dubai at the East Wing gallery. (It will coincide with Art Dubai). This past fall, 2014, I curated and managed RISC's photo auction benefit.

At The Half King, I work with James Price of Getty Reportage. Our bi-monthly exhibits of documentary photography are occasioned by an opening night event, where audience and photographer engage with each other. Openings have three elements: the mounted print show, a slideshow screening of the photographer’s project, and a discussion anchored by a moderator and open to audience participation throughout. Such face-to-face connection brings fresh, un-canned insight to the work on display. The intelligence, spontaneity, and focus that our audiences bring are vital, especially in our intensely digital world.

The Surveillanceseries I curate with Liza Faktor, of Screen. We show work by visual artists – photographers, filmmakers, data artists – who responding to the current phenomenon of surveillance. The series supplies context by way of panels and talks by investigative journalists, policy analysts, and data security experts. The shows attempt to create a conversation around three intertwined phenomena: 1) ongoing revelations about the reach of the government surveillance practices; 2) increasing public awareness about corporate data mining; and 3) evolving practices for how surveillance tools disclose social geography and production systems, and how they “see” Internet users as types vs. individuals.

Surveillance.02 will run March 12-April 30, 2015, at East Wing gallery in Dubai. The first show ran April, 3-25, 2014 at the New Media Center in Dumbo, NYC.