Daguerrotype to digital: new photo Curator fosters whole spectrum.

On the job at the George Eastman House only since the end of June, Alison Devine Nordstrom sees current changes in photo technology and philosophy as harbingers of an exciting time for the renowned Rochester museum. "Whatever the forms, ideas, or uses," Nordstrom declares. "I'm committed to all the ways in which photography records, remembers, and delights."

By education, experience, and an eclectic world view, Nordstrom has had a wide-ranging education, both formal and life-based. She was born and raised in Boston, where she earned her BV.A., summa cum laude, in English Language and Literature. She received a Master's degree in Liberal Studies at the University of Oklahoma and a Ph.D. in Cultural and Visual Studies from the Union Institute, College of Interdisciplinary Studies, in Cincinnati. Her dissertation explored "Photography and Tourism in the Gilded Age."

Far from stopping at the Ph.D., Nordstrom's education continued in her interdisciplinary way, encompassing issues ranging from strategic planning to advanced training in museum and library services, museum management, and even disaster preparedness for museums and cultural facilities. Throughout her professional career Nordstrom has been as wide-ranging and eclectic as she was in her formal education and training. She taught English as a Second Language in Canada. Lebanon and Japan. She did free-lance research, writing, and art administration in various venues: served as Executive Director of the Robert Flaherty Centennial Project, in Brattleboro, Vermont; Executive Director of the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center; Instructor in History of Photography, History of Cinema at Vermont Commnunity College.

More recently Nordstrom was a Research Associate (Ethnographic Photography) at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography; Adjunct Instructor in Museum Studies and History of Photography and Director of Independent Studies in Museum and Art Education and Critical Writing on Art at Daytona Beach Community College: Director and Senior Curator at the Southeast Museum of Photography, and, most recently, Executive Director of the New Hampshire Humanities Council.

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Nordstrom's achievements have been recognized by a number of awards, most recently the Gold Paragon Award of the National Council for Marketing and Public Relations. She was recognized for her work as chief editor and project manager of a five-volume set of exhibition catalogues and artists' books. Since 1986 she has performed consulting and professional services for more that fifty organizations of all kinds. She has produced scores of professional publications and reviews, delivered numerous lectures, and conducted many symposia and conference sessions.

From the evidence of education and experience, it should come as no surprise that Nordstrom sees herself as "really a generalist," a fundamental attribute she considers the most valuable asset that she can bring to her work. She does not speak of herself as a practitioner, but as a "consumer," of photography," committed to all of its technologies and imageries. The role of photography, as Nordstrom sees it, is to record and remember. "Actually," she says, "my main interest in pictures is in what happens to them after they're made. Photographs are slippery; they can change their functions with time. For example, what begins its life as a news photo can become art. We need to pay attention to images in all their incarnations." In this context, Nordstrom thinks, there may be a perception that the George Eastman House is essentially an historical museum, but she rejects that view: "Eastman House performs its recording and remembering functions at the same time that it provides images of contemporary culture.

Nordstrom is clearly fascinated by the visual construction of ideas and by ways in which photographic images contribute to human understanding and support a global range of cultural and artistic interests. She has a powerful interest in American and other cultures, and she is convinced that one of the major assets of the George Eastman House is what its collections have to impart about all these cultures. "We can look at pictures from other cultures and process the knowledge they carry. My hope for Eastman House is that it will attract all kinds of people with all kinds of interests and bring them together at the print."

Nordstrom is impressed by the strong support enjoyed by the George Eastman House from the Greater Rochester community, which is "lucky to have this marvelous resource: I hope people in all their diversity will keep coming back." As for herself, Nordstrom has a deep and abiding interest in the cultural assets of the Rochester region: as she acquires more and more knowledge of the region and its cultures and people, she hopes they will be "patient with my learning curve, as I work with one foot in the ivory tower and one in the real world."

MILTON LEDERMAN, PhD.

MILTON B. LEDERMAN, Ph.D. is a public affairs consultant based in Rochester, NY