Wim Melis is curator of the Noorderlicht photography foundation. Since 1995 he has been responsible for the content of the international Noorderlicht Photofestival, an annual event which alternates between the cities of Groningen and Leeuwarden, in the Netherlands. Noorderlicht activitities also include a large permanent gallery, a publisher and a range of international projects. Photobooks are created in-house, where Melis is involved as editor and deals with pre-press and on-press quality management. He was co-founder of the organization in 1990. After graduating in astronomy and applied physics at the University of Groningen, and before devoting himself fulltime to Noorderlicht, Melis worked from 1990 to 1997 as a freelance writer, photojournalist and co-director of a startup company that introduced digital photography to Dutch photojournalists.
