The Renaissance 2012 panel

Monica Allende is the Picture Editor of The Sunday Times magazine and is responsible for all aspects of photography. She developed and edits Spectrum - a new section devoted to powerful photojournalism from around the world. Previously she worked as picture editor for DK, APA and Pearson publishers before moving into newspapers; The Independent followed by The Sunday Times. Monica also teaches workshops on photography and is a committee member of the Royal Photographic society. While Monica has been working at The Sunday Times Magazine, the publication has received several awards for its photography, including: Picture Editor's award for Best Magazine in 2006; Best Feature in Photojournalism category for Amnesty International and Best Photography at the Design Awards.

Michael Hoppen has been involved in photography in one form or another for almost 35 years. Having worked as a professional photographer, he opened the Michael Hoppen Gallery in London in 1992. The gallery works with some of the great names and estates in photography such as Jacques Henri Lartigue, Tim Walker, Lillian Bassman, Sarah Moon, Robert Doisneau, Lucien Hervé, Shomei Tomatsu, Yoshihiko Ueda, Brassai, Blumenfeldt, Peter Beard, Araki, Guy Bourdin, Annie Leibovitz and Richard Avedon. The Michael Hoppen Gallery also exhibits in New York, Basel, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Paris.

Brigitte Lardinois is a curator, and she is the deputy director of the Photography & the Archive Research Centre, University of the Arts London. She has previously worked as Exhibition Organiser at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, where she specialised in photography exhibitions from 1985- 1995. In 1995 she joined the staff of Magnum Photos, where she set up and headed the Cultural Department in London. She organized Magnum group exhibitions as well as solo exhibitions with Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eve Arnold, Martin Parr and Elliott Erwitt amongst many others. She is a trustee on the Philip Jones Griffiths Foundation and currently curates exhibitions and edits photography books. She has edited Magnum’s Sixtieth anniversary book Magnum Magnum, which became a best seller and most recently co-edited Glydebourne: A Visual History together with Val Williams. They are currently curating together on aday.org, a world-wide photography project where thousands of photographs shot on the 15th May make up a huge database of life that day. Brigitte also curated the large exhibition All About Eve: The Photography of Eve Arnold earlier this year.

Mary McCartney is a professional photographer whose work spans the worlds of portrait and fashion photography. She has been commissioned for numerous publications including Harper’s Bazaar and Interview magazine. Her first solo exhibition Off Pointe – A Photographic Study of the Royal Ballet After Hours was shown at the Royal Opera House in 2004. Other solo exhibitions of her work have been held at OXO Tower, London, Goss-Michael Foundation, Texas, and Nunnington Hall, Yorkshire, while British Style Observed was exhibited as part of 30 days of Fashion at the Natural History Museum in 2008. Her work has been included in group exhibitions at the Royal College of Art, London, The Waterfront, New York and Plymouth Arts Studio. McCartney completed a special commission for the exhibition Gay Icons in 2009 and these works, including portraits of Ian McKellen and Sandi Toksvig, are now part of the Collection at the National Portrait Gallery. In 2010 her first book From Where I Stand was published by Thames & Hudson.

Brett Rogers has been the director of The Photographers' Gallery in London since 2005. Prior to this she worked at the Visual Arts Department of the British Council where she held the joint roles of Deputy Director and Head of Exhibitions. Brett has nearly thirty years of experience promoting photography and visual arts both in the UK and in her native Australia. During her career at the British Council, she successfully increased the profile and activity of British photography abroad with shows by such figures as Julia Margaret Cameron, Madame Yevonde and Martin Parr and Documentary Dilemmas: British Documentary Photography in the Nineties. More recently, she was responsible for initiating a series of group shows which broke new ground such as Look at me: Fashion and Photography in Britain 1960-1997, Reality Check, British Photography and New Media 2002-2004 (in collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery), Common Ground, Aspects of contemporary Muslim experience 2002-2005.