Elders from ACTA Community Theatre examine the working class history of South Bristol.
Artists Jessie Edwards Thomas & Kelly O’Brien are collaborating with elders from Acta Community Theatre, using performance and photography to explore the working class history of South Bristol, focussing particularly on the area surrounding East Street, Bedminster. During the festival, we will present the work created, inviting audiences to meet with the group and learn more about the project.
Originally from Snowdownia, North Wales, Jessie Edwards Thomas is a visual artist currently based in the South West. Her work often explores the relationship between individuals, communities and the state; drawing particularly on themes of belonging and alienation. Jessie’s practice is deeply connected to ideas of community. She has worked collaboratively with communities across Bristol, such as in the mental health sector and the homeless pathway.
Kelly O’Brien is an artist, educator and PhD researcher. Her work explores the relationship between photography, absence, personal experiences & political histories. Recent projects include The Absurdities of Austerity (ongoing), a collaborative project examining food in/justice in the UK today; No Rest For The Wicked (ongoing), a PhD research project investigating themes of class, gender & labour; and Are You There? (2017-2021), where she collaborated with clairvoyants to create an abstract image of her late and estranged father.
Participants from The Hive, a Bristol-based centre for adults with autism and learning disabilities, collaborate with artist Sebastián Bruno.
In 2023, we invited artist Sebastian Bruno to collaborate with participants from The Hive, a Bristol centre for adults with autism and learning disabilities. Through a series of workshops that drew upon the theatre techniques of Augusto Boal, Sebastian and the group enacted scenes from historic films that had once been shown at the now-closed local cinema. The group took the resulting photographs and painted over them, to create a series of experimental portraits. Following this initial collaboration, Sebastian and the group have continued working together, combining photography, theatre and play. During the festival, we will present a series of these collaborative works, with details to be announced Summer 2024.
Sebastián Bruno is an Argentine/Spanish photographer. His work explores the historical, political and social forces that shape communities, particularly those that have been overlooked or passed by in the name of progress. Recent publications include The Dynamic (IC Visual Lab, 2023) & Ta-ra (Ediciones Anómalas, 2023).
Bristol Photo Festival announces winners of Assembly Bristol photography competition
Axa IM Alts and their development partner, Bell Hammer, are currently building the final new office at Assembly Bristol. The development comprises three new office buildings – offering a variety of spaces and floor plate sizes. Its waterfront setting and landscaped areas provide a major new public space with access to Temple Way. Perfectly placed for transport, leisure and retail, the development is just a short walk from Temple Meads Station, Cabot Circus and the thriving Old City.
Designed by Stirling Prize-winning architects, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, Building B is due to complete shortly and will set a new standard in office innovation and design, combining contemporary architecture with a focus on post-Covid occupant wellbeing and sustainability. It aims to deliver a new office for Bristol – not just an office that is newly constructed but one which embodies a new way of thinking about workspaces and how they respond to the enormous shift in the way the world is now working.
In partnership with the Bristol Photo Festival, Axa IM Alts, Bell Hammer and AHMM sponsored a photography competition for all BA and MA students studying at UWE to shoot an image to be installed in their ground floor entrance lobby.
The jury was composed of Rob Samuel (Axa IM Alts), Maëva Bregere (Axa IM Alts), Patrick Davis (Bell Hammer), Alejandro Acín (Bristol Photo Festival Director), Adam Burgess (AHMM) and Alex Chinneck (artist). After receiving all the submissions, we are very happy to announce the winners and honourable mentions: Joseph Deveney (winner) and Lucy Bentley and An Nguyen (honourable mentions). The winning artwork will be ready for installation at Assembly Bristol in April 2024, and the students will be invited to unveil it on site in May 2024.
On display at High Street venues across Bristol in August 2023
The stories of Bristol’s high streets and the communities who inhabit them will be told in collaboration with leading Bristol-based and international photographers this summer.
Photographers Khali Ackford, Michael Alberry, Sebastian Bruno, Jade Carr-Daley, Mohamed Hassan, Chris Hoare, Kirsty MacKay, Lua Ribeira and Clementine Schneidermann amongst others have been commissioned to co-create work across Bristol’s historic high streets. The photographers either live in Bristol or have strong ties to the city. Their images will be created in collaboration with writers, facilitators and the communities which they depict. The results of their collective work will go on display in a series of public exhibitions across four of the high streets—Filton Avenue, Shirehampton, Stapleton Rd and Two Mile Hill—in August 2023 to share the stories and ideas which matter to them most. Bristol Photo Festival will also deliver additional workshops and other activities in Church Road, Filwood Broadway, Stockwood, Brislington and East Street.
DREAMLINES: Picturing Bristol High Streets is organised by Bristol Photo Festival which will return to the city in 2024. The project is funded by Historic England as part of its four-year programme of cultural activity celebrating England’s high streets. It is also one of the activities under the City Centre and High Streets Recovery and Renewal programme, funded by Bristol City Council and the West of England Combined Authority’s Love our High Streets project.
Participating photographers:
Michael Alberry (Filton Avenue) will be photographing spaces and landmarks to explore ideas of community, working in collaboration with Ebenezer Church, The Filtons Choir and the Filton Primary School.
Evening Prayer. Michael Alberry. Cwmbran, Wales 2014 (from the series A Time To Dance)
Kirsty Mackay (Filton Avenue) will be exploring the impact of the cost of living crisis on local communities.
Billy, 19, Easterhouse. At school
his teachers told him not to bother
applying for university. Billy is now
studying for a degree in politics.
“The thing that has an effect is the
perception that because you are from
Easterhouse, you can’t do that sort
thing. If you look at the alternative;
I’d be alone, I’d be in prison or I’d
be dead.”
Chris Hoare (Shirehampton) will set up a temporary portrait studio to create a record of those living in the area. In addition, he is working with community groups for both the old and the young to both remember and re-imagine the high street.
Pam, her granddaughter and great-granddaughters outside the Tap & Barrel, Bedminster. Chris Hoare. Bedminster, Bristol 2014
Clementine Schneidermann (Shirehampton) will be working with The Shire Stitchers to collaboratively produce a series of personal quilts using creative portraiture.
Marilyn, Clementine Schneidermann & Charlotte James 2019
Khali Ackford (Two Mile Hill) will be working to explore the everyday hidden heritage of the area where many businesses have historic roots, for example, Bakers Corner which has been in place for nearly 100 years and The Nylon Shop, a haberdashers operating for over 60 years.
Black Lives Matter Organisers. Khali Ackford. Castle Park, Bristol 2021 (from the series Celebration)
Sebastian Bruno (Two Mile Hill) will be collaborating with The Hive, an organisation working with neurodiverse groups, on a series of workshops will take inspiration from the cinema.
Remembrance Day. Sebastian Bruno. Nantyglo, Wales 2016
Jade Carr-Daley (Stapleton Road) will collaborate with businesses in the area that act as community hubs, and building on her ongoing work with Black mums and women’s groups to reflect recent challenges.
Lee’s. Jade Carr-Daley. St.Pauls, Bristol 2017 (from the series 0117)
Mohamed Hassan (Stapleton Road) photographed during Eid Mubarak, and working with cultural groups in the area.
Hiraeth. Mohamed Hassan. Alexandria, Egypt 2018 (from the series The Place I Call Home)
Lua Ribeira (Stapleton Road) will be working with young community groups as her project develops over the summer.
Falling. Lua Ribeira. Settat, Morocco 2019 (from the series The Fortunate Ones)
Some of the resulting photographers’ work will be displayed in traditional exhibition settings, but the project will also utilise community noticeboards, window displays and posters as well as being accessible online. In addition, a writer will be announced in the coming weeks, who will respond to the work being created across the city and in the communities.
“Our mission as a festival is to enable communities—via collaboration with leading photographers—to reflect upon their experiences and explore how we live together today. The photographers we have commissioned will not only make a record of time and place, but also explore the playfulness and nuances of the photographic medium. While Bristol is one city, it contains many layers and stories. While some are well-told, others are often overlooked. By documenting the different high streets, we hope to both reactivate them as cultural destinations and also create a collective portrait that tells the story of Bristol today.”
Alejandro Acin, Director, Bristol Photo Festival
“Through support from our City Centre and High Streets Recovery and Renewal programme, together with Historic England,DREAMLINES: Picturing Bristol High Streets will provide a creative photographic promotion of our priority high streets in a series of collaborative projects and exhibitions over the summer. The aims of the project are to help animate the high streets and encourage Bristol’s citizens to explore and celebrate the places they live, making connections to each other and adding to a sense of belonging and identity. The exhibitions will also help increase the number of people visiting and using the high streets, providing much needed support to the local independent businesses that help give our high streets their character.”
Councillor Craig Cheney, Deputy Mayor and Cabinet Member for Finance, Governance, Property and Culture
“DREAMLINES: Picturing Bristol High Streets promises visual storytelling on a grand scale. This exciting project will bring nine communities across Bristol together with talented photographers to explore identity, belonging and pride of place. From Brislington to Shirehampton, Picturing Bristol will be a truly creative way for people to share what matters to them about the place they call home. The project was inspired by Historic England’s Picturing High Streets project, a celebration of today’s high streets through images taken by people across the country.”
Ellen Harrison, Head of Creative Programmes and Campaigns at Historic England
Notes for editors
These images are representative of the photographers’ past work and are not the work created for this project, which is currently underway. The project images will be released in June/July.
Bristol Photo Festival supports leading photographers, artists and writers to develop long-term collaborative projects that explore how we live together today. These projects are presented alongside major commissions that focus on bringing the best of international photography to the city. Our work is cyclical and always in progress. The first edition took place in 2021. This has been followed by a period of making with the major presentation scheduled for autumn 2024.
DREAMLINES: Picturing Bristol High Streetsis being delivered as one of the activities under the City Centre and High Streets Recovery and Renewal programme, funded by Bristol City Council and the West of England Combined Authority’s Love our High Streets project.
Historic England is the public body that helps people care for, enjoy and celebrate England’s spectacular historic environment, from beaches and battlefields to parks and pie shops. Its role is to protect, champion and save the places that define who we are and where we’ve come from as a nation. Historic England cares passionately about the stories they tell, the ideas they represent and the people who live, work and play among them. Working with communities and specialists, Historic England shares its passion, knowledge and skills to inspire interest, care and conservation, so everyone can keep enjoying and looking after the history that surrounds us all.
High Streets Heritage Action Zone initiative: Taking place in more than 60 high streets across England, and receiving £7.4 million from UK Treasury, Arts Council England and National Lottery Heritage Fund, it’s the largest ever community-led arts and heritage programme. By restoring local pride and attracting people back to their local town centres, the High Streets Heritage Action Zone scheme is playing an important role in Levelling Up and acting as a powerful catalyst for increasing opportunities and prosperity. To find out more visit here
We are excited that Bristol Photo Festival will be working with Historic England and Bristol City Council to deliver a series of commissions for photographers, writers and facilitators responding to Bristol’s high streets. The resulting work will be showcased through collaborative projects, workshops and exhibitions in summer 2023. The project will focus on Filton Avenue, Two Mile Hill, Shirehampton, Stapleton Road, Brislington, Church Road, East Street, Filwood Broadway and Stockwood. Picturing Bristol is a project funded by Historic England and one of the activities under the City Centre and High Streets Recovery and Renewal programme, funded by Bristol City Council and the West of England Combined Authority’s Love our High Streets project.
As part of this nationwide project, a new outdoor exhibition Picturing High Streets, telling the stories behind the nation’s shopfronts, goes on display at Bristol’s Merchant Street from today until 1 May 2023. The photographs are the winning entries from a nationwide call for entries for images which reveal a sense of community, belonging and pride in our local high streets. The winning images will be displayed on outdoor advertising screens hosted by Clear Channel UK. The exhibition is part of a three-year project by Historic England and Photoworks, in partnership with national and regional photography organisations, to create a contemporary portrait of England’s high streets.
Picturing Bristol will be an interim project by Bristol Photo Festival before its second edition in Autumn 2024, more information about this will be announced in Autumn 2023.
Bristol Photo Festival is happy to announce the upcoming exhibitions in collaboration with the Royal West Academy, both originally planned for the first edition of the festival in 2020 but covid and RWA building works caused the delay to now. Its going to be exciting to finally see it come to fruition.
A Bend in the River by Jem Southam @jemsoutham displays a series of photographs documenting subtle changes in the environment over time, following the movements of swans in two parts: representing arrival (at dusk) and departure (at dawn). These images were taken at a particular spot on a riverbank in the South West of England where Southam became lost in contemplation one December evening. He returned to the same spot each day during the rest of the winter. Over the following five years between 2015-2020 Southam continued creating series in the same location. The ever-changing surface of the water, passing clouds, trees waving in the breeze, ducks gliding across the river and swans flying to roost caught Southam’s attention and what began as a passing digital photo led to a powerful ongoing series of deeply affecting photography.
The gathering of swans became a particular inspiration leading to the second part of the series Swan Winter which draws on northern European myth and Scandinavian folklore. Curiosity instigated a shift in the timing of Southam’s visits and he began heading to the river at dawn in search of where the groups of swans spent the night. Eventually, they swam into view in the half-light. Southam captures these dimly lit scenes with a haunting other-worldly quality, illuminating what is barely visible to the naked eye.
Southam’s use of a Sony digital camera in this series marks a departure from his usual preference for the large-format camera. It allowed him to experiment with a range of new opportunities unavailable in more traditional modes, pushing exposure values to the extreme.
A Bend in the River series is shown in full together with selected works from other series created at the same riverbank over the following years including The Wintry Heavens, Forty Dawns and The Flooded Pool. In these Southam’s attention turns towards the skies, the changes in light at daybreak and more distant, broader views of the riverside.
Interspersed across Southam’s photographs is a curated selection of artworks that have inspired him and complement his practice. For example, pieces by artists such as JMW Turner, John Constable and John Leigh-Pemberton; illustrators of popular natural history books; and artists who worked for publications such as Ladybird and Shell.
Alongside Jem’s exhibition the RWA Photo Open celebrates contemporary photographic practice in all its forms. This Open Call exhibition invited submissions from artists and photographers, at any stage of their careers, who create photographic work or explore the nature of photography in their work. Our former director Tracy Marshall-Grant @tracymarshallgrant1 has been part of the jury panel alongside acclaimed artist-photographers like Jem Southam, Amak Mahmoodian @amak_mahmoodian , Sian Bonnell @sianbonnel, Susan Derges RWA @susanderges and Judith Jones RWA Judith Jones
Both shows will open on the 28th January 2023.
Ticket price for Bend in the River includes entry to the Photo Open. No need to book in advance – tickets will be available on the day
We’re excited to announce that Dipina tsa Kganya: Leave the light when you leave for good by Lebohang Kganye—a collaboration with The Georgian House Museum as part of the inaugural Bristol Photo Festival, will be going on display from Monday, April 4 2022.
The Georgian House was once home to a sugar trader and his enslaved staff, and Lebohang’s new work invites us to reflect on the legacy of colonialism as a shared history. The work, a black and white three-channel video installation offers a response to the violence of historical erasure of names and oral traditions.
The central component is the lighthouse featured in the middle channel of the video work. A light beam, in perpetual motion, casts light onto the surrounding ocean scene and in turn creates shadows in the two peripheral channels of the work.
In the first video, a lighthouse keeper appears as a custodian of this light, tending to it by continually cleaning the bulb – a light source that symbolically guides those lost at sea. The song featured in the work (composed by musician Thandi Ntuli) plays from a large, custom-built Polyphon music box, which is hand cranked in the third video.
These performative gestures are in conversation with the southern African practice of the ‘praise-singing’ of clan names as a way of passing down the origins of the family story as an act of resistance to historical erasure.
“The word dipina means ‘songs’ in my mother language of seSotho. The song referred to is that of my family clan names, traditionally passed down through oral tradition. Additionally, the Sotho word for ‘light’: kganya – is in the etymology of my last name: Kganye.”
Lebohang Kganye
Film Still collage from Dipina tsa Kganya, 2021. The work will be shown for the first time at the Georgian House Museum as part of the Bristol Photo Festival. Inauguration announced for spring 2022.
Lebohang Kganye was born in 1990 in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she currently lives and works. Kganye received her introduction to photography at the Market Photo Workshop, in Johannesburg, in 2009 and completed the Advanced Photography Programme in 2011. She obtained a Diploma in Fine Arts from the University of Johannesburg in 2014 and is currently doing her Masters in Fine Arts at the Witwatersrand University. Notable awards include the Grand Prix Images Vevey 2021/22, Paulo Cunha e Silva Art Prize, 2020, Camera Austria Award, 2019 and the finalist of the Rolex Mentor & Protégé Arts Initiative, 2019.
Kganye is participating in major museum group exhibitions in 2021, Family Affairs. Family in Current Photography at the House of Photography in Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Germany and The Power of My Hands, at Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, France. She has exhibited her work extensively within curated group exhibitions and biennales including: Afterglow, Yokohama Triennale, Yokohama Museum of Art, Japan, in 2020; Africa State of Mind, a travelling exhibition presented at the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, UK, in 2019–2020, theMuseum of African Diaspora, San Francisco, USA, in 2019 and the Impressions Gallery, Bradford, UK, in 2018; The Way She Looks: A History of Female Gazes in African Portraiture at the Ryerson Image Centre, Toronto, Canada, in 2019; Recent Histories, a touring exhibition of Contemporary African Photography and Video Art from Arthur Walther Collection, presented at Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography, Amsterdam, in 2018–2019; Tell freedom, by all means necessary, at Kunsthal KAdE, Amersfoort, Netherlands, in 2018; Give me Yesterday, Fondazione Prada, Milan, Italy, in 2016 and Telling Time, at the Bamako Encounters Biennale of African Photography, Bamako, Mali, in 2015.
In 2021, a solo exhibition of Kganye’s newly commissioned works will be presented by the Georgian House Museum in Bristol, UK. Earlier solo exhibitions include The Stories We Tell: Memory as Material, at George Bizos Gallery at the Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg, South Africa in 2020; Ke Lefa Laka: Her-story, ata ppr oc he inLe Molière, Paris, France in 2019; Mohlokomedi wa Tora at the Pretoria Art Museum, Pretoria, South Africa in 2018, Ke Lefa Laka: Her-story, at Festival Africolor at Université Paris 13, in Bobigny and Villetaneuse, Paris, France, both in 2016 and Ke Lefa Laka at Market Photo Workshop, Johannesburg, South Africa in 2013.
23 September – 30 November 2021 Thursday – Sat 12pm – 8pm Strange Brew, Bristol 10-12 Fairfax St, Bristol BS1 3DB, United Kingdom
Photographs chronicling Bristol’s music scene since the 1980s by Mark Simmons will go on display, many for the first time, as part of Bristol Photo Festival. Studio portraits of artists will be displayed alongside photographs capturing music events and venues across the city. Collectively, these photographs demonstrate the diversity and energy of music in and across Bristol during a period of great creativity.
Bogle Competition
Easton Community Centre, October 1992
A Jamaican Bogle dance competition at the local community centre. “The young man looks completely rapt, his partner is serene and holding the space while the crowd cheers them on.”
High Volume – Bristol Sounds exhibition,
Strange Brew, 10-12 Fairfax Street, BS1 3DB
23rd September – 30th October 2021.
For the exhibition, Simmons revisited his archive of over one hundred thousand images — approximately 20 thousand focusing on music— to select 30 to represent the city’s recent musical heritage — both mainstream and counter-culture. The exhibition includes early portraits of well-known figures such as Massive Attack and Roni Size & Reprazent alongside influential but less-well known figures such as John Stapleton, AKA Dr Jam, the Moonflowers, Sub Love, Phantom Limb and Rob Smith AKA RSD of Smith & Mighty, pivotal pioneer of the ‘Bristol Sound’.
John Stapleton, AKA Dr Jam.
Founder of Def Con, Blow Pop, Get Off, The Cooker, Dope on Plastic
Ashton Court Festival, July 1987.
High Volume – Bristol Sounds exhibition,
Strange Brew, 10-12 Fairfax Street, BS1 3DB
23rd September – 30th October 2021.
Alongside these portraits the exhibition includes images documenting deep house nights at Trinity, early Drum & Bass ‘Jungle’ sessions at Malcolm X, St Paul’s Carnival sound systems and street revellers, the crowds at Ashton Court Festival, and dance competitions at Easton Community Centre amongst others.
Simmons was most active on the music scene in the 1990s, working for club promoters, local and national magazines. As a result, many of the images in the exhibition were taken as professional commissions where Simmons would often stay for several hours to dance and immerse himself in the ambience. Being a part of the collective experience gained him tacit acceptance to record these often unguarded and open portraits. In addition to his work documenting music, Simmons has worked as a photographer/photojournalist in the fields of the arts, community activity and wider political engagement.
“When taking photos you’ve got to be in the eye of the storm to really capture that moment and Mark has always been that guy”
Daddy G (Massive Attack)
Roni Size and Krust,
Bristol Drum & Bass duo photographed for Straight No Chaser magazine. As Reprazent, they would go on to win the 1997 Mercury Prize for their album New Forms.
High Volume – Bristol Sounds exhibition,
Strange Brew, 10-12 Fairfax Street, BS1 3DB
23rd September – 30th October 2021.
Brigstocke Road studio, January 1996
16 October – 16 January 2021 ARNOLFINI, Bristol 16 Narrow Quay, Bristol BS1 4QA, United Kingdom Tue – Sat 11.00 – 18.00 Sunday 11.00-17.00
In Autumn 2021 Arnolfini will celebrate over thirty years of extraordinary practice from Bristol-born photographer Stephen Gill, drawing together new previously un-exhibited work including his latest series Please Notify the Sun alongside works from other iconic series including Hackney Flowers, Buried, Talking to Ants, Night Procession, Pigeons, Coexistence and Coming up for Air.
Also featuring the first UK presentation of images from award winning photographic series and book The Pillar, the exhibition will explore Gill’s rich sense of space, leading us through the flea markets and towpaths of Hackney Wick in London, to his current rural surroundings amidst the Swedish countryside.
Creating numerous distinct bodies of work, Gill – described as a ‘documentarist’, ‘anthropologist’ and ‘dazzling visual poet’ – has built his photographic career upon an ethos of experimentation. Eschewing a signature style in order to adapt both his creative and technical approach to the subject at hand, has led to alchemical ‘experiments’ including photographic burials, floral collage, in-camera photograms and submerging work within a watery world.
Informed by the artist’s own extensive and meticulously ordered archive, the exhibition provides a portal into Gill’s unique world, one in which the very constraints of photography are turned upon their head and strangely poeticised. Exploring this vast resource, artist proofs, original photo books and archival material, are displayed alongside prints, selected by the artist, highlighting the often unseen poetics of urban and rural environments.Coming up for Air : Stephen Gill – A Retrospective is curated by Stephen Gill and Arnolfini’s Executive Director Gary Topp and forms part of Arnolfini’s 60th anniversary programme, celebrating its past, present and future, as well as the inaugural Bristol Photo Festival.
Stephen Gill(b. 1971 in Bristol, UK), became interested in photography in early childhood, thanks to his father, an interest in insects and an initial obsession with collecting bits of pond life to inspect under his microscope. As a child he enrolled on his first photography course at Bristol’s Watershed, photographing the streets and cityscapes around him.
Stephen’s photographs are held in various private and public collections and have also been exhibited at many international galleries and museums including London’s National Portrait Gallery, The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Museum of London, Agnes B, Victoria Miro Gallery, Christophe Guye Gallery, Sprengel Museum, Tate, Centre National de l’audiovisual, Galerie Zur Stockeregg, Archive of Modern Conflict, Gun Gallery, The Photographers’ Gallery, Palais des Beaux Arts, Leighton House Museum, Haus Der Kunst and has had solo shows in festivals including – Recontres d’Arles, The Toronto photography festival, Festival Images – Vevey and PHotoEspaña.
Gill has self-published numerous award-winning photo books such as Invisible, Hackney Wick, Warming Down, A Series of Disappointments, Archaeology in Reverse, Hackney Flowers, Buried, Off Ground, Coming up for Air, B-Sides, Trinidad 44 Photographs, A Book of Birds, Outside In, Coexistence, Hackney Kisses, Pigeons, Best Before End, Talking to Ants, and most recently The Pillar, which won the Les Rencontres de la Photographie author book award.
5 – 30 October 2021 Tuesday -Friday 11.30 – 16.30 The Vestibules, Bristol City Hall, College Green, Bristol BS1 5TR, United Kingdom
‘If there is no image, there is no identity’
The exhibition ‘We Are Still Here’ focuses on individuals affected by HIV/AIDS and their living spaces. The project aims to counter a decline in visibility of the HIV/AIDS community by inviting the audience in to these personal spaces, which have been curated to better the mental health of their inhabitants.
Portraits by photographer Mareike Günsche will be displayed alongside images selected by the participants of objects from, and areas in, their living spaces which bring them joy .The exhibition allows the subjects to represent their own sense of place, both as individuals and within wider society. Due to stigmatisation in the past, the subjects of the exhibition may have been excluded from traditional living rooms, and there is presently a steady decline in awareness about HIV/AIDS in the public consciousness. The exhibition, and wider ongoing project from which is it drawn, affirms ‘We Are Still Here’. The project also exists online so that those within the HIV-community across the world, can add their own stories in perpetuity.
‘Photography can immortalise victims and offer remembrance, but this medium is also a poignant and reassuring tool for survivors. Not to be forgotten are the families of both, and the difficulties that come with understanding a disease that’s also experienced second-hand. The family portrait will be examined as an institution of both exclusion and inclusion, with participatory photography to be used as a means of reclamation for the absence of a whole community. Due to stigmatisation, HIV+ people have been excluded and even banished from many traditional living rooms in the past. If there is no image, there is no identity. This is even truer in today’s times of expanding social media, where the image becomes the medium of legitimation. Photography and its crucial role as a means of identity, visibility and representation will therefore be used as a resource to help negate such stigmatisation.”
Martin Burns – Writer, HIV/AIDS activist and equality advocateThis interdisciplinary research project is a collaboration between Dr Adrian Flint (University of Bristol, SPAIS), Mareike Günsche (Photographer/Educator and Lecturer of photography at the State University of Arts, Mongolia) and Martin Burns (Writer, HIV/AIDS activist and equality advocate). This exhibition has been produced as a result of the festival commissioning programme in collaboration with the Brigstow Institute (University of Bristol).
