Mark Curran (born 1964) is an artist researcher & educator who lives & works in Berlin and Dublin. He holds a practice-led PhD from the Dublin Institute of Technology, is Lecturer on the BA (Hons) Photography programme, Institute of Art, Design & Technology (IADT), Dublin and is Visiting Professor on the MA in Visual & Media Anthropology, Freie Universität Berlin. Incorporating multi-media installation informed by ethnographic understandings, since 1998, Curran has undertaken a cycle of long-term research projects, critically addressing the predatory context resulting from the migrations and flows of global capital. These have been extensively published and exhibited, including DePaul Art Museum, Chicago (2010), Xuhui Art Museum, Shanghai (2010), Encontros da Imagem, Braga (2011), Grimmuseum, Berlin (2013) & FORMAT, Derby (2013). Curran has also presented widely, most recently at McGill University, Montreal (2014), the Royal Anthropological Institute, London (2015), the University of Ljubljana (2015) & the University of Bern (2015). Supported by Arts Council of Ireland & curated by Helen Carey, THE MARKET continues the cycle & focuses on the functioning & condition of the global markets. It has been installed at the Gallery of Photography (2013), Belfast Exposed Gallery (2013), Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (2014) & Noorderlicht, Netherlands (2015). More recently, in autumn 2015, an extensive installation titled The Economy of Appearances was presented at Limerick City Gallery of Art (LCGA). A full publication of THE MARKET is planned.

John Tagg (born 1949) is one of the most prominent contemporary contributors to critical theory of photography and art history. He started his academic career in the UK in 1976 and has since 1984 lived and worked in the United States. Tagg wrote a number of essays and influential books on the relationship between photography, institutions and power, such as The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (1988), Grounds of Dispute: Art History, Cultural Politics and the Discursive Field (1992) and The Disciplinary Frame: Photographic Truths and the Capture of Meaning (2009). He is currently a Distinguished Professor of Art History at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

Robert Hariman (born 1951) is a professor of rhetoric and public culture at the department of communication studies at Northwestern University. He is the author of Political Style: The Artistry of Power (University of Chicago Press, 1995) and two volumes co-authored with John Louis Lucaites: No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 2007) and The Public Image: Photography and Civic Spectatorship (University of Chicago Press, 2016). His other publications include edited volumes on popular trials, prudence, post-realism, and the texture of political action, as well as journal articles on parody, allegory, banality, and other modes of public address. His work has been translated into French and Chinese. He and Lucaites post occasionally on photojournalism, politics, society, and culture at their blog Nocaptionneeded.com.