FESTIVAL TEAM

Katy Barron

Festival Director

katy@photooxford.org

Katy is a photography curator and acts as agent for a number of artists and estates. She is Chair of the Board of Trustees of Photofusion in Brixton and a member of the Maud Sulter Advisory Board. 

Katy has been focussed on photography for the past 20 years, working with museums, festivals, galleries, collectors and artists in a variety of capacities such as curating exhibitions both in the UK and abroad, advising museums and collectors on acquisitions, running artists’ residencies and prizes and mentoring photography groups as well as writing exhibition catalogues and attending portfolio reviews in the UK and abroad.

 She studied at the Courtauld Institute of Art and Magdalen College, Oxford.

Alex Scheideman 

Special Projects Curator

Alex was the Artistic Director of Photo Oxford 2023 and is curating an exhibition at the Bodliean Library in 2025 on the work of photographer, Paddy Summerfield. 

Alex runs Flow Photographic Studio where he provides imaging services to many of the world’s leading galleries and publishers. He also curates exhibitions in the Flow gallery space. 

He is a visiting lecturer on several postgrad photography courses including UAL LCC and the Northern School of Art.  

Mariasanta Tedesco is a manager and buyer at Blackwell’s Bookshop in Oxford, with many years of experience in social media management and promotional strategies. She studied European politics between Italy and France and has always loved art to the bones. 

An emerging photographer and fascinated by the surreal imaginary and its vocabulary, her projects result from her intimate reality, which she translates by exploring with self portraiture. Mariasanta is keen to examine the fascinating link between images and words, photography and the book. 

She is a contributor to various organisations, both as an artist and as a writer, she has been curating the Photo Oxford Instagram platform since 2020. She has also been collaborating with Hundred Heroines, an organisation raising the profile of women photographers. 

She was part of a theatrical company for several years, focussing on experimental performances and improvisation and has recently taken an interest in butoh, a form of avant garde Japanese dance theatre.