A Sense of Place

Exhibitions open spring 2021

bristolphotofestival.org

Bristol Photo Festival is a new biennial festival with a year-round programme of commissions and collaborations, culminating in a series of exhibitions by both local and international artists in spring 2021. For the first time, all of the city’s major visual arts institutions, alongside independent and unconventional spaces, have come together to create a programme to demonstrate the power and diversity of photography. Each edition of the festival will be themed and display existing work by emerging and established artists, alongside newly commissioned work engaging with multiple aspects of the city of Bristol. 

The theme of the inaugural festival is A Sense of Place. Relating to the theme, there will be year-round collaborative programmes, including projects on natural, domestic and industrial spaces across the city through the construction and contestation of visual archives, alongside the production of new photographic works and text. The exhibitions have been developed in collaboration with curators from venues across the city and includes work by James Barnor, Jessa Fairbrother, Stephen Gill, Thilde Jensen, Lebohang Kganye, Lua Ribeira, Jem Southam, Sarah Waiswa and an exhibition curated by Firecracker. The full programme will be announced in winter 2020.

Festival Highlights include:

COLLABORATIONS

Growing Spaces

This collaborative project encompasses the traditional allotment alongside unofficial growing spaces in the city. Local photographer, Chris Hoare has been commissioned to create an ongoing project focusing on city’s allotments, accompanied by a collection of written narratives. In collaboration with allotment holders, societies and food producers, the festival will accumulate an archive of images representing this sector of city life. For further information on ongoing and future collaborations, and for how to participate please visit bristolphotofestival.com/collaborations

EXHIBITIONS

Thilde Jensen – The Unwanted at the Martin Parr Foundation

The Unwanted is a visual account of homelessness in America. Over a period of 4 year, Danish photographer, Thilde Jensen, set out across the US to create an authentic document of this community excluded from mainstream society. 

Stephen Gill – A Retrospective at the The Arnolfini

Bristol-born Stephen Gill has always created work close to home and explored his locality both directly and indirectly. From buying a cheap camera at a car boot sale, then shooting the same sale with this camera, or pressing flowers found on the wastelands of Hackney, onto photos of the same locality – a sense of place is present in his work. This exhibition will draw upon 30 years of Gill’s work from his best-known series to new and previously un-exhibited images

Lebohang Kganye at the Georgian House Museum 

Lebohang Kganyehas been commissioned to create new work to be displayed in the Georgian House Museum, drawing upon the museum’s own history and archive. Using three-dimensional, photographic collage, Kganye’s past work has explored her personal history whilst resonating with the wider history of South Africa. For this new work, the Johannesburg-based artist will weave complex narratives of this 18^th century Bristol sugar plantation and slave owners home – drawing together the stories of the inhabitants, and the larger story of Georgian Bristol. 

EDUCATION

Bristol Photo Festival will include a unique educational programme involving students from primary and secondary schools, colleges and universities around the city and beyond. With the role and importance of visual literacy in today’s world, the festival will offer critical spaces for the discussion of photography history, its practices and contexts.

‘We want to challenge the concept of a festival as a month-long event parachuting into a city. We wanted to create a festival for the city, rather than in the city – with an ongoing programme throughout the year which really engages with the locality and local people in the run up to and beyond the exhibition opening week in spring 2021. Although a majority of the work in the exhibitions will not be ‘about’ the city of Bristol, much of it will relate to issues affecting the city both in its past and in the present day. The aim is for the festival to become a collaborative platform that includes participatory, educational and experimental projects reaching a variety of audiences, locations and demographics. This was only made possible thanks to public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England.’

Tracy Marshall – Festival Director

For further press information and images please contact Eleanor Macnair  — eleanormacnair@hotmail.com  /  07815 780708

NOTES FOR EDITORS / PRACTICAL INFORMATION

The theme – A Sense of Place

To photograph a place is to describe a location that has been shaped, nurtured and even contested. It can define the frontier between nature and culture and hint at the complexities of ownership and access. It can be attended by competing narratives and polarised histories, whether they lean left or right. It can shape our understanding of the world and the
qualities that come to define us…and it can be about belonging, about appreciation and knowing a place so well that it is like no other. 

Confirmed participating venues include:
Arnolfini, Royal West Academy, Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol Museum and Galleries, Spike Island, Georgian House, Watershed and Bristol Archives.

Bristol Photo Festival has been made possible thanks to public funding from the National Lottery through Arts Council England.

Tracy Marshall has been appointed Festival Director. She is an Arts Director & Producer specialising in the production of photography exhibitions, festivals, education projects and workshops. She is Director of Northern Narratives- the non-venue-based photography production company- and was previously Director of LOOK Photo Biennial, Open Eye Gallery Liverpool and Belfast Exposed Gallery. Tracy has previously been Director of Development for a number of international Arts organisations covering the development of work for classical music, visual arts and literature. Prior to this she had also been a Director of Campaigns for health, social welfare and education charities across UK & Ireland.

Bristol Photo Festival Team

Rudi Thoemmes — Chair/Development Director  | Tracy Marshall — Festival Director | Education and Engagement Director — Alejandro Acin | Artistic Director for 1^st Edition  — Martin Parr

Committee Members

Gary Topp —  Director of Arnolfini | Amak Mahmoodian  —  Artist and lecturer in photography at UWE | Becky Peters  — Senior Officer for Programming for Culture & Creative Industries at Bristol City Council | Emma Chetcuti  —  Director of Multistory, Jim Brown  —  Advisor to the voluntary, community and co-operative sector. 

BPF Festival Director of Engagement and Education, Alejandro Acín, shares his thoughts about the role of the festival and highlights the main aims and goals for this first edition.

It was impossible to predict what was about to happen when last February we were given the green light to start the work for this first edition. No need to say this health crisis has brought a lot of changes and challenges to our current routines especially when the enjoyment of culture has been neglected to the space of the screen (with its pros and cons). But I think we are all missing other types of cultural experiences that can help us to go through these difficult times. Art is one of the very few spaces where we can actually experience freedom nowadays, however this also needs to be continuously questioned and challenged. Therefore, creating a cultural festival to offer spaces for critical discussions and creative freedom may become more important than ever.

“art is one of the very few spaces where we can actually experience freedom nowadays, however this also needs to be continuously questioned and challenged.”

Cultural festivals seem to be ubiquitous in modern societies, filling the social calendar and the cultural agenda with a vast number of events, happenings and spectacles and Bristol is not an exception. In Bristol, we have festivals of music, food, cinema, radical cinema, theatre, performance, circus, there is also a harbour festival and a balloon festival too…  

So what’s the need for yet another festival?

This was one of the first questions the BPF team has been trying to answer for the last two years. Probably the short answer would be that the Bristol Photo Festival is just an organic consequence of more than eight years of regular photographic activities happening in the city and delivered by a variety of actors and groups that now have decided to come together. So this coming together is an important element, if not the most, and which made possible that for the first time all the main art venues in the city are collaborating to deliver a program of photography exhibitions. Considering, the photographic scene in the city 10 years ago was minimum, this seems a good enough reason to celebrate this new festival.

So what should the role of the festival be? 

Here, we can find many different valid approaches but there seem to be a common characteristic to most of the festivals, its ephemerality. Festivals tend to happen annually, or biannually focussing their main activities over a period of time where everyone works towards it. This is a dynamic that those who organise cultural festivals cannot really avoid which is exciting and challenging at the same time. But what about if a festival is also conceived as a collaborative platform rather than just a celebratory event?. This is the second key element of the Bristol Photo Festival, it’s designed to support an ongoing public programme of photography collaborations, commissions and educational projects throughout the year, and yes there will also be a celebratory event every two years to showcase a rather exciting programme of exhibitions in the main art venues of Bristol but also in independent and unconventional spaces. 

Based around these two key elements, we have designed a engagement structure with three types of programming: : Dissemination, Collaboration and Learning in order to expand the ideas around this year’s theme, “A Sense of Place”. Here, there are some highlights: 

The first two collaborative projects are looking into places that have become substantially relevant during this pandemic: The Living Room and The Allotment. We are inviting artists, students, local archives, community groups and the general public to collectively explore the documentary, (re)constructive and also fictional dimensions of these two important spaces. There will be a series of creative activities in partnership with other organisations (workshops, commissions, mail art-packages…) to complement the various digital channels of interaction as well as exhibitions displaying some of the results. 

CATALYST is an exciting mentoring programme produced by IC Visual Lab, for local and international early career photographers supported by some of the BPF team members, guest mentors and selected artists in the production of new bodies of work which will be exhibited during the festival. A resulted exhibition will be held as part of the festival Spring program.

We are also interested in encouraging critical thinking and visual experiments using photography and visual archives in schools delivering an innovative educational project entitled CRITICAL EYE: Visual Archives for Education, also produced by IC Visual Lab and design by THE CAGE team in collaboration with local museums, galleries and archives with a yearly programme of activities involving artists, students and school teachers.

Finally, we will cooperate with other local, national and international organisations in the delivery of unique exhibitions, events and public programmes. For example, we are working with Firecracker as part of their 10th Anniversary, showcasing a generation of woman practitioners using photography as instigator of conversations, interventions and collaborations. Another example is a collaboration with the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection held at the Bristol Archives in a public programme to challenge and question Bristol’s colonial legacy through a series of creative activities with diverse groups around the city. 

These are only few of the activities that we will initiate in this first edition, the program is in constant development exploring the boundaries of the photography medium, how it permeates through other disciplines like film, music or performance and establishes a dialogue with other fields such as science, anthropology or history. We are determined to make a program that engages with an intersectional audience that represents the demographics of the city of Bristol. We will reflect and evaluate these experiences to keep challenging ourselves in the design and delivery of new activities in the city of Bristol.

Tracy Marshall is an Arts Director & Producer specialising in the production of photography exhibitions, festivals, education projects and workshops. She is founding director of Northern Narratives and was previously Director of LOOK Photo Biennial, Open Eye Gallery Liverpool and Belfast Exposed Gallery in Northern Ireland. Tracy has previously been Director of Development for a number of international Arts organisations covering the development of work for classical music, visual arts and literature. Prior to this she had also been a Director of Campaigns for health, social welfare and education charities across UK & Ireland. In this new venture as Bristol Photo Festival Director, Tracy Marshall shares some words about the journey that took her to Bristol.

When I was first asked to join the team developing the Bristol Photo Festival I knew it would be a festival unlike few others. Having directed and been on the board of a number of photography festivals, and having been a director in two photography galleries, I could see from the structure being developed that this was an ambitious and vision led organisation.  This was not just a festival for a few months annually or bi annually, this was a festival establishing itself as an organisation of permanence within the city, which offered sustained programmes of education, engagement and mentorship 12 months a year, every year. This permanent structure would then bi annually produce a 2-month series of high quality national and international exhibitions across all of the city. What was most authentic about this vision and ambition was that it had at its core collaboration- with all major cultural and arts organisations, the academic institutes, the community groups, the council and local businesses. This ensured the festival had reach, commitment and the ability to fulfil its ambitions across and for the city, both during the year and during the biannual festival periods, truly consuming and filling the city spaces, places and communities. 

Another major appealing element of this festival for me was the exceptional professional expertise that already existed within the team. Combined alongside some of the top museum/gallery curators and directors from the city was photography expertise at the highest level. Rudi Thoemmes and Alejandro Acin – who had founded and established the highly successful and much missed Photobook Bristol and whose publishing, education and visual arts work internationally had helped raise Bristol to the forefront of photography. Finally, Eleanor McNair, one of the most well-respected media writers for the photography sector. With these focus’ combined it ensured the festival would produce impactful, relevant and inspiring outcomes locally, nationally and internationally.  

Combined alongside these draws for me was also the aims for the programme of the 2-month festival period in spring 2021. These were inspired and inspiring, aiming to bring a core programme of high-quality exhibitions into all the key cultural institutions in the city which would consume them all in photography for the very first time simultaneously. Combined with this would be an evolving second tier series of exhibitions across more innovative and unusual city spaces in every section of the city. Both programmes comprised of diverse national and international artists with a sense of place as the theme permeating throughout. Coupled with this are 2 new commissions by the festival featuring a local and international photographer taking Bristol as their focus. 

These dynamic foundations ensure that Bristol Photo Festival can produce a festival which will be at the top of the international calendar of biannual events for photography but also one that puts photography at the heart of all Bristol cultural institutions and embeds it in sustained way within the city, its communities and its cultural/educational offerings for the long term. 

As a team we have put our combined energies and skills into this first edition- and alongside the rest of society- we have done this most recently in the midst of the Covid 19 pandemic, but with the knowledge that moving on from this crisis we all crave spaces to meet, positive outlooks, plans to look ahead to and creative nourishment and inspiration. 

Tracy Marshall

Bristol Photo Festival has been developed over the last 18 months by a team of UK based individuals whose roles within the photography sector are wide reaching and significant. Developed with partners from across the city, the region, nationally and internationally the team have worked together to produce an exciting, impactful and high quality first edition programme of photography. 

Chair/Development Director- Rudi Thoemmes

German born Bristol based publisher and bookseller Rudi Thoemmes specialises in Documentary photography, his recent publications by his company, RRB Photobooks, include Peter Mitchell, Krass Clement, Marketa Luskacova, Ken Grant among others. Apart from publishing, Rudi also represents Amak Mahmoodian, Peter Mitchell and John Myers. He is also involved as a Trustee/Director with several photography organisations in the city.

Festival Director – Tracy Marshall

Tracy Marshall is an Arts Director & Producer specialising in the production of photography exhibitions, festivals, education projects and workshops. She is Director of Northern Narratives- the non-venue-based photography production company- and previously was Development Director at Open Eye Gallery and directed their biannual LOOK Photo festival and Belfast Exposed Gallery. Tracy has previously been Director of Development for a number of international Arts organisations covering the development of work for classical music, visual arts and literature. Prior to this she had also been a Director of Campaigns for health, social welfare and education charities across UK & Ireland.

Education and Engagement Director – Alejandro Acin

Alejandro Acín is director of IC Visual Lab, an artist-led organization based in Bristol (UK) focused in disseminating photography across audiences through a regular programme of collaborative projects, educational activities and public events. In 2016, he founded ICVL Studio where he collaborates with other artists and organizations as a designer and art director in printed and digital publishing projects. He has extensive experience working with various archival institutions delivering creative engagement and educational projects using sound, film and photography. 

Press Manager – Eleanor McNair

Eleanor McNair works in Freelance Press and Communications services for organisations specialising in photography. Her clients include GOST Books, Magnum Photos, Martin Parr Foundation, Huxley-Parlour Gallery and RRB Photobooks. She has worked previously for National Portrait Gallery, Photo Vogue Festival 2017, 2018 and 2019, FORMAT Festival 2017, Phaidon, Amanasalto / IMA, Atlas Gallery, Powerhouse Books, Future Artefacts 2015, Unicorn Press, Grimaldi Gavin Gallery, and WaterAid.

Committee Members: 

Amak Mahmoodian

Amak is a contemporary Persian artist, born in Shiraz, but currently based in Bristol. Her work questions Western notions of identity, expressing personal stories that pertain to wider social issues which draws on her experiences in the Middle East, Asia and the West. Her body of work Shenasnameh was published as a book, in 2016 and has since been shortlisted for a number of awards- Time magazine 2016 & Best Author Book Award, Rencontres Arles 2016. In addition, the work has been widely exhibited internationally, at Belfast Exposed Gallery, NI (2017), Umetnostna Galerija, Slovenia and at the Photographic Centre Northwest, Seattle, USA (2018). Her latest work Zanjir has been published as a book by IC Visual Labs and RRB Photobooks in 2019 and exhibited in January 2020 in Arnolfini, Bristol. Amak is senior lecturer in photography at UWE.

Becky Peters

Becky is the Senior Officer for Programming for the Culture & Creative Industries team within Bristol City Council.  She is responsible for managing the exhibitions, events and family programme across some of the city’s major museums which include M Shed and Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.  Becky has managed the delivery of numerous museum projects including Roman Empire Power & People with the British Museum, the artist Jeremy Deller’s Venice Biennale exhibition English Magic to Bristol Music: Seven Decades of Sound an immersive experience that celebrated the city’s music scene

Cultural Partners

At the core of Bristol Photo Festival is our collaborations and our partnerships, which have been key to the development and roll out of the festival. Our partners:

Arnolfini | British Culture Archive | Bristol Archives | Bristol Galleries & Museums | Firecracker | IC Visual Lab | James Hyman | Martin Parr Foundation | Multistory | RRB Publishing | Royal Photographic Society | St. Pauls Community Darkrooms | The Real Photographic Company | Royal West Academy | Spike Island | University of the West England | Watershed | Wellspring Settlement