Laura Serani is an independent curator, artistic director, writer, and consultant in photography and video. Based in Paris and active since the 1980s, she has developed a practice that moves across Europe and Africa, linking exhibitions, festivals, publishing, and critical writing. Her work has consistently focused on contemporary photography, especially the discovery and support of emerging artists. She is regarded as an important figure in the documentary photography field, although her influence is primarily curatorial rather than photographic. Through sustained international activity, she has helped create conversations between artists, institutions, and audiences working in different cultural contexts.

Serani’s curatorial method is defined by attention to new voices and by a commitment to giving early-career photographers meaningful platforms. She served as the godmother of the first edition of Circulation(s), the Festival of Young European Photography, a role that reflects her interest in presenting developing practices while offering visibility and critical guidance. Rather than treating exhibitions as isolated displays, she approaches them as spaces in which artists can be encountered, contextualized, and connected to wider debates. Her work combines practical organization with an alertness to the artistic and social questions carried by documentary images.

A significant part of Serani’s career has been devoted to African photography and to strengthening its circulation beyond its immediate contexts. She curated within the African Biennial of Photography in Bamako, Mali, in 2009 and 2011, helping connect African artists with European audiences and institutions. She later served as artistic director of Planches Contact in Deauville from 2019 to 2024, contributing to a festival that places photography in dialogue with the town’s cultural heritage. Her work with the Fondation des Treilles further demonstrates the breadth of her institutional collaborations and her ability to adapt curatorial thinking to different settings.

Serani has also written numerous books and critical texts, contributing to both academic discussion and public understanding of contemporary photography. Her writing frequently accompanies exhibitions that she curates, supplying historical, social, and artistic frameworks for the works on view. This combination of curating and writing gives her a distinctive intellectual presence: she is able to move between the practical demands of producing projects and the interpretive work of explaining why images matter. Her activity therefore extends beyond selection, encompassing the narratives, relationships, and forms of attention through which photography reaches an audience.

For photobook collectors, Serani’s importance lies less in any particular monograph she may have produced than in the institutional and critical influence she has exercised. Through exhibitions and publishing projects, she has helped shape the reception of emerging and African photography, and her early support has contributed to the later international recognition of many artists. Her curatorial choices can consequently serve as a useful path into bodies of work with historical and artistic significance. Although she is not a photographer, her gaze offers a map for discovering important practices in contemporary documentary photography, while encouraging collectors to consider the contexts and production networks behind the books they acquire.

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