David Bate

Dr David Bate works across cultural theory and the visual arts, specializing in photography and critical theory. He studied film and photographic arts at the Polytechnic of Central London (1980-1983), the MA social history of art and a PhD at the University of Leeds with Griselda Pollock. He taught photography at University of Creative Arts, Farnham (1988-1997) and then led the MA Photographic Studies programme (1998-2015) at the University of Westminster. His numerous publications include the monograph of his visual works and shorter essays, Photography as Critical Practice: Notes on Otherness (University of Chicago, 2020); Art Photography (Tate Publications, 2015); Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism and Social Dissent (IB Tauris, 2024); Photography After Postmodernism: the Art of Memory (Routledge 2022); ZONE (London: Artwords, 2012), and the widely translated book Photography: Key Concepts (second edition, Routledge, 2019). His research and visual works explore the intersection of culture and subjectivity, memory and technology, informed by psychoanalysis, philosophy, literary theory, cinema and visual studies. He is emeritus professor at University of Westminster, London, UK and visiting professor at Haikou University, China. He is also a founding co-editor of the theory journal Photographies and is currently based in London, UK.