Michael Harvey

Biography

Following a career as a professional photographer and film, video and multivision programme maker, Michael Harvey was, until 2013, Curator of Cinematography at the National Media Museum, Bradford, UK (now the National Science and Media Museum). He was responsible for managing its world-class collection of professional and amateur cinema technology, broadening it to reflect the realities of film production with the addition of artwork, photographs, posters, documentary material and discrete collections such as that of the Hammer Films special effects make-up artists.

He curated major exhibitions including Magic Behind the Screen: 100 Years of British Cinema (1996); Bond, James Bond (2002), which toured to major venues in the USA and Canada; Myths and Visions: The Art of Ray Harryhausen (2006); Live by the Lens, Die by the Lens: Film Stars and Photographers (2008); and Drawings that Move: the Art of Joanna Quinn (2009). He also initiated a long-term series of on-stage interviews with those working in the wide range of disciplines involved in film and television production, under the banner Script to Screen.

In 2012, his work on researching and realising the first colour moving images from the original footage by Edward Raymond Turner in the Museum’s collection attracted worldwide media attention.