Rupert Jenkins

2023

Rupert Jenkins is a freelance photography curator, editor, and non-profit arts manager with more than 30 years professional experience. His company Durrington Edits specializes in arts-related editorial projects; exhibition planning; and consulting, with an emphasis on photography and the photo-related arts.

Since 2017 he has been researching post-WWII photography in Colorado for a book titled Outside Influence (projected publication date fall 2024).

As of March 2023 his most recent projects include editing book texts for renowned media artist, Carrie Mae Weems; writing an afterword for Out of Town, a monograph by the Swedish photographer Magnus Westerborn; and completing the Outside Influence manuscript for submission to University Press of Colorado.

Contact Rupert at: durringtonedits@gmail.com

Biography - to see details about Rupert’s career and individual projects, go to the Menu tabs at left.

Since 2005, I have worked as a gallery director, curator, and writer in Denver, Colorado. My professional arts career began in 1982 at a small photo gallery in San Francisco.

I joined the Eye Photography Gallery - a heady collective of social documentary and rock music photographers - soon after moving to San Francisco from Oregon. Blue Sky Gallery in Portland had become a model organization for me, and Eye Gallery fit the bill as a place to learn and network. Over the next five years I helped the gallery transition from a collective to a registered non-profit, and to move to a central downtown location. Not ready to commit to a full-time position, I left Eye in 1988 to travel in Europe.

I joined San Francisco Camerawork as Assistant Director to Marnie Gillett (pictured at left) in 1989. Camerawork was then the most prominent non-profit photo organization in San Francisco, and Marnie became a valued mentor and close friend. Thanks to her and other colleagues there, my time at Camerawork was an incredibly productive learning experience. I helped organize two "Feminism, Activism, and Art" conferences that took place in the early 1990s at the height of that era’s culture wars. My immersion in postmodern and feminist pratice introduced me to some of the world's foremost photographers and writers, among them Nan Goldin, Carrie Mae Weems, Deborah Willis, Joel Peter Witkin, David Levi Strauss, Rebecca Solnit, Larry Sultan, and numerous others.

I left Camerawork in December 2004 to work full-time as exhibition consultant and contributing editor on Nagasaki Journey: The Photographs of Yosuke Yamahata, a 50-year commemoration project that resurrected the archive of a Japanese army photographer sent to Nagasaki the day of the atomic attack on that city, August 9, 1945. 

After Nagasaki Journey opened in August 1995 I was appointed director of the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery (1995-2005). There, I oversaw four municipal exhibition sites in the Civic Center – a contemporary gallery in the Veterans Building, community galleries in City Hall, an adjacent storefront space for video and sculpture, and an open lot for environmental installations. As director I strove to represent the broadest possible interpretation of San Francisco's San Francisco's amazingly diverse and creative arts communities.

It was a difficult decision to make, but after twenty-plus years in the city I moved to Denver, Colorado, and have lived there since 2005.

To follow my arts management career in Colorado, go to the "Denver" tab under the “Curatorial” menu tab at left.

To follow my publishing career, go to the “Editorial/Durrington Edits" menu tab at left.

The “Colorado Photo History Blog” menu tab will take you to Rupert’s ongoing Outside Influence book and research project.