Female in Focus x Nikon Judges

Charlotte Jansen is a British Sri Lankan author and journalist based in London. Jansen is a photography critic for The Guardian, and writes on contemporary art and photography for The Financial Times, The New York Times, British Vogue and ELLE, among others. She is the author of Girl on Girl: Art and Photography in the Age of the Female Gaze, (HACHETTE, 2017) and Photography Now (TATE, 2021). Jansen hosted the Dior podcast series ‘The Female Gaze’.

Danielle Jackson is a critic, researcher, and arts administrator. As the co-founder and former co-director of the Bronx Documentary Center, a photography gallery and educational space, Danielle helped conceive, develop, and implement the organization’s mission and programs. Formerly, she ran the Cultural Department at Magnum Photos NY. She teaches courses in photography and visual culture at Stanford in New York and New York University. Her writing has appeared in various art publications.

Naoise O’Keeffe is the founder of Hot Potato, a photography-led publication that engages with politics through compelling visual storytelling. After starting her career in fashion, she pursued an MA in Photography at the University of the West of England. Naoise is currently a freelance photography editor at the Financial Times Weekend Magazine and was previously the photography director of Port magazine, an eye opening experience that deepened her commitment to promoting diversity in the industry. She also works as an associate lecturer, teaching photography within photography and anthropology courses at universities including Goldsmiths, London College of Communications, Kingston, and UWE. Naoise frequently designs and facilitates creative, interdisciplinary workshops for photography programmes and is a regular guest speaker at events across the UK and Ireland.

Her interest in nurturing emerging talent has led her to mentor alongside industry figures like Jim Goldberg and Emma Bowkett at the Centre National Audiovisual Luxembourg, and she is currently collaborating with Photo Meet and Photoworks on a mentoring event at the Brighton Photo Fringe.

Co-founder and Director of DECK Photography Art Centre and the Singapore International Photography Festival (SIPF), Gwen Lee has a background in the museum industry, where she worked for six years before pursuing her passion for photography. She founded the Singapore International Photography Festival, the longest-running photography festival in Southeast Asia.

In 2010, Lee received an arts award from the Japan Chamber of Commerce & Trade in recognition of her contributions to Singapore’s arts community. In 2013, she undertook curatorial research in Germany, supported by the Goethe-Institut Singapore and the National Arts Council. In 2022, she was honoured with the title of Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, conferred by the French Ministry of Culture.

Since 2013, SIPF has received grant support from the National Arts Council to further develop public photography education in Singapore. In 2014, Lee and her team established DECK, an arts centre dedicated to photography, providing year-round programming and residency opportunities for photographers. DECK received the Singapore President’s Design Award in 2015 for its innovative architectural design and contribution to the arts. Since 2016, DECK has been a recipient of the NAC Major Company Grant as a dedicated photography arts space in Singapore.

Lee has curated over 60 photography exhibitions in Singapore and internationally. Some of the notable exhibitions include Margins: Drawing Pictures of Home (2020) at the ArtScience Museum, Flux: Contemporary Photography from China (2014) at the ArtScience Museum, STEIDL DECK: 1001 Steidl Books (2016) at DECK, the Southeast Asia premiere of Daido Moriyama: Prints and Books from the 1960s–1980s (2016) at the 6th SIPF, Between Love and Death: Diary of Nobuyoshi Araki (2018) at the 7th SIPF, The Natural History of an Island at the Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival (2021), and Archipelago: Paradise Revisit at the Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival (2023).

She has served as a jury member and portfolio reviewer for numerous international platforms, including the FOAM Paul Huf Award, New Cosmos Japan, FORMAT UK, KL PHOTO Award, KG+, DIPE China, Lensculture Awards, Houston Fotofestival, Daegu Photo Biennale, Rencontres d’Arles, and the Ballarat International Foto Biennale.

Born into a Senegalese family in the northern districts of Marseille, Marie Gomis-Trezise founded Galerie Number 8 in 2016. The groundbreaking creative director and France’s first Black A&R executive at a major company, discovered her passion for photography while shaping her artists’ sound and image. This discovery became the foundation for her vision to spotlight emerging photographers from the African diaspora and the global South.

Yemeni-Bosnian-US artist Alia Ali works across mediums and continents to deconstruct artificial binaries, stimulate collective intention, and map the history of human exchange. Ali examines inherited political narratives—diaspora, identity, borders—through the lens of photography, language, video, textile, and architectural installation, inviting the viewer to confront their own biases and expand their view of our shared world. A graduate of Wellesley College and the California Institute of the Arts (CALARTS), Ali lives and works between New Orleans, Paris, Marrakech, and Jaipur. She is the recipient of the prestigious ARTSY Vanguard Emerging Artist Award, grantee of the Andrew Mellon Foundation of the Arts, and a NIKON Global Ambassador. Her work has integrated the permanent collections of The British Museum, Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Photography, New Orleans Museum of Art, and Princeton University, among others. Her work has been featured in publications such as Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Architectural Digest, and the Financial Times.