EXHIBITIONS

BPF is collaborating with many art venues around the city to deliver a long-term programme of photographic exhibitions. The festival is also offering some public displays showcasing the results of our engagement and commissioning programme.

- Summer Showcase -

James Barnor:
Ghanaian Modernist

18 May - 31 October 2021
Tue-Sun 10.00-17.00
VENUE: Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

Queens Road Bristol BS8 1RL

 

James Barnor was Ghana’s first international press photographer working from his studio Ever Young at the time of independence (1957) and selling his pictures to the Daily Graphic and Drum magazines. He came to Britain in 1959, photographing London and returning to Accra where he established X23, the city’s first colour photography studio. Ghanaian Photographer showcases Barnor’s Black modernism, a fusion of pan- African futurism and 1970s style. 

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Image

© James Barnor. Courtesy of Galerie Clémentine de la Féronnière

Beyond the Frame

Heather Agyepong - Jessa Fairbrother - Lua Ribeira

18 May - 10 October 2021 
Tue-Sun 10.00-17.00
VENUE: Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

Queens Road Bristol BS8 1RL

Artists Heather Agyepong, Jessa Fairbrother, and Lua Ribeira have been invited to take part in collaborate with Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. The artists’ own work will be displayed alongside and juxtaposed with the Museum’s collections and archives.

Heather Agyepong utilises her own image in her photography, performing a catalogue of identities that have paraded through colonial discourse on African peoples. Her work will be shown among the Grand Tour paintings from the 18 th century  offering a postcolonial perspective on the gallery. Jessa Fairbrother explores images of femininity through the lens of psychoanalysis and her work will be displayed among the museum’s Pre-Raphaelite paintings and modern French art — presenting self-authored contemporary narratives alongside the historic images of women by men. Lua Ribeira’s photographs will be presented amongst the angels and demons of Solario and Bellini and the abstract canvases of the galleries.

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© Heather Agyepong

© Lua Ribeira

© Jessa Fairbrother

Lips Touched with Blood:
Sarah Waiswa

18 May - 31 October 2021
Tue-Sun 10.00-17.00
VENUE: Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

Queens Road Bristol BS8 1RL

 

Sarah Waiswa, a documentary and portrait photographer based in Kenya, will be collaborating with the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection at Bristol Archives. The exhibition Lips Touched with Blood will showcase a selection of her contemporary portraits of African people alongside portraits from the archives in a thought-provoking display, to reframe and challenge existing narratives around colonialism, power and identity. Sarah draws heavily on the captions of the archive images in her interpretation, and one of these has been used as the title of the exhibition. 

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Image

© Sarah Waiswa, created from original photo by Charles Trotter, copyright Bristol Archives. (right) © Sara Waiswa (left). 

Island Life

18 May - 31 October 2021 
VENUE: Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

Queens Road Bristol BS8 1RL

 

Island Life: photographs from the Martin Parr Foundation

Island Life focuses on the UK and Irish work in Parr’s collection, providing a biography of life in post-war Britain. It shows the changing fabric of our cities, society and collective identities: documentary photography as anthropology, training the lens on ourselves.

The collection forms a compelling study of national behaviour - how we present ourselves, what we communicate when we're off-guard, and how that has changed over the past 70 years. Moments of political significance like the poll tax riot and the Aberfan mine disaster contrast with weddings, a night in a Butlins lounge or teenagers on the rampage. The everyday - shopping, a haircut, a game of football - acquire a hyper-real quality from the aesthetics of the shot and the passage of time.

Island Life traces the evolution of documentary photography in Britain, the photographers who influenced Parr and the younger generation he's influencing in turn.

 

More info

© Chris Killip Photography Trust

© Clémentine Schneidermann and Charlotte James

© Paul Graham

© Victor Sloan

© Graham Smith

© Jill Quigley

Jo Spence

From Fairy Tales to Phototherapy
 
Venue: ARNOLFINI
18 May - 20 June 2021
16 Narrow Quay Bristol BS1 4QA
 
Drawn from one of the most comprehensive collections of Jo Spence's works in the world, From Fairy Tales to Phototherapy focuses on the intersection between arts, health and wellbeing, celebrating her work as a photo therapist in which she used photography as a medium to address personal trauma, reflecting on key moments in her past.
 

 

More info
Image

IN PROGRESS

Laia Abril - Hoda Afshar - Widline Cadet - Adama Jalloh - Alba Zari

Curated by Aaron Schuman

Venue: The Royal Photographic Society
20 May – 24 October 2021
337 Paintworks Arno’s Vale Bristol BS4 3AR
 

IN PROGRESS is a new show commissioned by the RPS consisting of five solo exhibitions of both new work and work-in-progress, by five of the most innovative photographers and photo-based artists working today. The exhibition explores a wide range of issues – including personal history, cultural identity, nationality, community, migration, displacement, memory, responsibility, morality, belief and the creative process – and highlights the diverse possibilities that photography offers in the pursuit of both artistic and social progress.

 

More info

© Hoda Afshar

© Adama Jalloh

© Laia Abril

© Alba Zari

© Widline Cadet

Thames Log:
Chloe Dewe Mathews

 

Venue: Martin Parr Foundation

20 May - 29 August 2021
316 Paintworks Arno’s Vale Bristol BS4 3AR

 

Chloe Dewe Mathews spent five years photographing up and down the River Thames, from its puddling source to great estuary mouth. The resulting series of work, Thames Log, examines the ever-changing nature of our relationship to water, from ancient pagan festivities through to the rituals of modern life.

In Thames Log, Dewe Mathews focuses on lives that overlap regularly with the river but often go unnoticed — ship spotters, who log the continual stream of vessels that pass through Tilbury, and mudlarks as they comb the city sludge for Roman and Saxon treasure. In the countryside, above the tidal river, she encounters a druid coracle builder, a mass baptism and the annual census of royal swans.

 

More info
Image

The Floating Harbour:
Jem Southam

Venue: The Underfall Yard

18 June 2021 - TBC
Cumberland Road Bristol BS1 6XG
 

The Floating Harbour, is a series of photographs of Bristol Harbour made in the late 1970s by Jem Southam providing a unique and definitive portrait of the harbour at a time of rapid change. One of Southam’s first major projects, the photographs were published in ‘Floating Harbour’ (1983) and majority of the works will be exhibited here for the first time.

More info
Image

Growing Spaces:
Chris Hoare

Venue: Royal Fort Gardens (University of Bristol)
18 June - 26 September 2021

Tyndall Avenue Bristol BS8 1TH

 

Growing Spaces by photographer Chris Hoare is a chronicle of urban land cultivation in Bristol. Since April 2020, Hoare has been slowly and methodically documenting the allotment-goers, landscape and seasonal changes across the official and unofficial growing spaces of the city. The resulting photographs, originally commissioned by Bristol Photo Festival, are published in this new book Growing Spaces to coincide with an exhibition of the work at the inaugural festival in summer 2021. 

Hoare’s project documents eleven sites across the city from established allotment sites to community gardens and improvised plots on disused lands. The project was conceived pre-Covid-19 pandemic but its timing, coinciding with increased demand for green spaces for cultivating produce, allowed him to capture the formation and energy of a growing renaissance.

 

More info
Image

Jessie Edwards-Thomas

Venue: Arnolfini
1 June - 1 September 2021
16 Narrow Quay Bristol BS1 4QA
 

Jessie Edward Thomas has co-designed and co-produced Grey Areas, a photographic dialogue with five individuals with complex needs who are currently within or have experienced the ‘homelessness pathway’ in Bristol. The work was created during the winter of 2020/21, the year of the pandemic; when our basic needs for shelter and safety were highlighted across the nation. Our concerns were rooted in the question ‘what does Home mean to our sense of Wellbeing?' What is continuing to happen to our city spaces which is pushing people further and further away, physically, mentally and socially? Grey Areas reflects the impact our physical spaces have upon our mental spaces. This work does not provide answers, but asks you, the viewer, to question the broken perceptions we may hold.

This original body of work has been produced during Blueprint: Housing & Wellbeing, an artistic commission by Arnolfini and Bristol Photo Festival in collaboration with Golden Key Partnership supported by ArtFund.

 

More info
Image

Elective Affinities

Billy Barraclough - Debsuddha - Jenna Garrett - Kelly O’Brien - Maria Gracia Cebrecos - Sibusiso Bheka 

Venue: BPF Public Gallery

18 June - 30 July 2021
Old Post Office The Galleries
Broadmead Bristol BS1 3XB

The tension between culture and nature is a matchmaking force that has occupied our minds for centuries. In a current system that dehumanizes and separates, ‘Elective Affinities’ brings together a series of personal stories that investigate universal themes inviting the reader’s reflection on the human condition. Through six visual essays, these authors observe connections between people, their beliefs and actions by exploring family narratives, the process of grief and loss, the margins of social standards, mythological representations, the relation between faith and place and the imact of urban racial segregation. The resulting work has been produced throughout Catalyst, an international mentorship programme, supporting six innovative photographers working alongside a group of international mentors; consisting of artists, designers, curators, educators and photographers. The programme is designed to further their personal careers and widen their approach and methods to photographing. The programme is directed by IC Visual Lab in collaboration with Bristol Photo Festival.

More info

© Sibusiso Bheka

© Jenna Garrett

© Debshudda

© Kelly O'Brien

© Billy Barraclough

© Maria Gracia Cebrecos

Room to Grow

A Participatory Visual Archive
 
Venue: Windmill HIll City Farm
18 June - 26 September 2021

Philip Street Bedminster Bristol BS3 4EA

 
 

Room to Grow is a living visual archive documenting the life in allotments taking place in Bristol and beyond. Looking at the stories and history of both allotments and allotment holders, members of the public were invited to contribute an online archive throughout 2020 and 2021 with photographs and tales. From sneaky foxes to vibrant redcurrants,  this archive aims to highlight and pay tribute to the creativity of both photography and growing.

This outdoor exhibition will be touring around Bristol City Farms and other future locations.

 

More info

© Claudia Melina

Image

- Showcase Autumn - 

Coming up for Air: Stephen Gill – A Retrospective

ARNOLFINI
16 October 2021 - 16 January 2022
 
 

Celebrating thirty years of extraordinary practice, Bristol-born photographer Stephen

Gill, draws together new previously un-exhibited alongside works from his iconic back catalogue, with the first UK presentation of images from award winning photographic series and book The Pillar. The exhibition explores Gill’s rich sense of space, through the flea markets and towpaths of Hackney Wick in London, to his current rural surroundings amidst the Swedish countryside.

 

More info
Image

Dipina tsa Kganya: Leave the light when you leave for good.  Lebohang Kganye

Opening Date TBC
The Georgian House Museum
7 Great George St, Bristol BS1 5RR
 
A film installation exploring a familial narrative that is concerned with notions of healing, enacted through gestures of naming and of cleansing. South African artist, Lebohang Kganye references family, memory and heritage. Kganye has created a new work at the Georgian House Museum as part of Bristol Photo Festival. The installation offers a response to the violence of historical erasure of names and oral traditions. The house was once home to a sugar trader and his enslaved staff. Dipina tsa Kganya invites us to reflect on the legacy of colonialism as a shared history.

as a shared history.

 

More info
Image

I AM NOT INVisible:
Thilde Jensen

16 September – 19 December 2021
Martin Parr Foundation
Paintworks, 316, Arno’s Vale, Bristol BS4 3AR, United Kingdom
Thu- Sun 10.30 – 17.30
 
 

I AM NOT INVisible 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. 

Thilde Jensen began the work that led to this project when in 2014, she met Reine and Lost, two homeless men in Syracuse, New York. Reine and Lost lived under a highway, and had survived three Upstate New York winters, huddled together on a small concrete ledge. This almost unimaginable fact, drew her into a four-year project, photographing in Gallup, New Mexico, Las Vegas, and New Orleans as well as Syracuse.

More info
Image

Turn to Return:
Helen Sear & Robert Darch

25 September - 23 October 2021 
Wed-Sat 11.30-15.30
Centrespace Gallery
6 Leonard Ln, Bristol BS1 1EA, United Kingdom

 
Turn to Return brings together two series of work, ‘Within Sight’ by Helen Sear and ‘The Island’ by Robert Darch, both exhibited here for the first time. Sear’s series was made whilst repeatedly walking the same mountain passage in Majorca and Darch’s work was made in response to Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in 2016. On the surface, the series are disparate both visually and in subject matter. However, when presented and interacting within the exhibition space, further similarities become apparent.
 
More info

© Helen Sear

© Robert Dartch

We Are Still Here

4 - 30 October 2021
The Vestibules (Park Rd)
City Hall, College Green, Bristol BS1 5TR, United Kingdom

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 into 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

More info

© Mareike Günsche

© Mareike Günsche

© Mareike Günsche

High Volume: Bristol Sounds

Photographs from Mark Simmons
 
23 September – 30 November 2021
Thu - 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.

l)

Image

Birch Class: A year in pictures

3-6 & 12-14 September 2021 
11.00 – 16.00

St. Michael on The Mount Without
Bristol BS2 8DT
 

hotography project  documenting the school life during the pandemic. The festival provided mentoring sessions and also worked with BPF exhibition photographer, Lua Ribeira, to deliver a workshop with the pupils during the rehearsal of their end of the year play, Twelfth Night. The workshop was inspired by her current exhibition at Bristol Museum & Art Galleries. The resulting photographs will be exhibited at St Michael's on the Mount Without's newly restored crypt in September..

l)

More info
Image

© Chris Killip Photography Trust

© Clémentine Schneidermann and Charlotte James

© Paul Graham

© Victor Sloan

© Graham Smith

© Jill Quigley

Island Life

18 May - 31 October 2021 
Tue-Sun 10.00-17.00
VENUE: Bristol Museum and Art Gallery

Queens Road Bristol BS8 1RL

Island Life: photographs from the Martin Parr Foundation

Island Life draws upon photographs from the Martin Parr Foundation collection to show the changing fabric of our cities, society and collective identities. Focusing on post-war from the UK and Ireland, the exhibition will bring together images by over 60 photographers including Khali Ackford, Pogus Caesar, Elaine Constantine, Sian Davey, Chris Killip, David Hurn, Ken Grant, Markéta Luskačová, Graham Smith and Tom Wood. Collectively the images form a compelling study of national behaviour.

The exhibition includes photographs which document moments of historical significance including the poll tax riot, the Aberfan mine disaster and most recently, the BLM movement.
These will be displayed alongside images depicting the everyday – weddings, shopping, football and Butlin’s holidays. Island Life traces the evolution of documentary photography in Britain, the photographers who influenced Parr and the younger generation he is influencing in turn.

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Image

WITH-IN

FIRECRACKER 10 YEARS ANNIVERSARY

WITH-IN is a celebration of firecracker, an organization who has been supporting the work of female photographers for over 10 years with mentoring, publications, talks and now for the first time an exhibition. This project will have a series of events and other activities attached. More information soon.

 

Image

From Fairy Tales to Phototherapy: Jo Spence

 
18 June - 20 June 2021
Tue-Sat 11.00-18.00 | Sun 11.00-17.00
VENUE: ARNOLFINI

16 Narrow Quay Bristol BS1 4QA 

 
Drawn from one of the most comprehensive collections of Jo Spence's works in the world, From Fairy Tales to Phototherapy focuses on the intersection between arts, health and wellbeing, celebrating her work as a photo therapist in which she used photography as a medium to address personal trauma, reflecting on key moments in her past.
 
Photographs from the James Hayman Collection.

 

MORE INFO
Image

WITH-IN

FIRECRACKER 10 YEARS ANNIVERSARY

WITH-IN is a celebration of firecracker, an organization who has been supporting the work of female photographers for over 10 years with mentoring, publications, talks and now for the first time an exhibition. This project will have a series of events and other activities attached. More information soon.

 

© Hoda Afshar

© Adama Jalloh

© Laia Abril

© Alba Zari

© Widline Cadet

IN PROGRESS

Laia Abril - Hoda Afshar - Widline Cadet - Adama Jalloh - Alba Zari . Curated by Aaron Schuman

20 May - 24 October 2021 
Thu-Sun 10.00-17.00
VENUE: The Royal Photographic Society
 

IN PROGRESS is a new show commissioned by the RPS consisting of five solo exhibitions of both new work and work-in-progress, by five of the most innovative photographers and photo-based artists working today. The exhibition explores a wide range of issues – including personal history, cultural identity, nationality, community, migration, displacement, memory, responsibility, morality, belief and the creative process – and highlights the diverse possibilities that photography offers in the pursuit of both artistic and social progress. 

MORE INFO
Image

WITH-IN

FIRECRACKER 10 YEARS ANNIVERSARY

WITH-IN is a celebration of firecracker, an organization who has been supporting the work of female photographers for over 10 years with mentoring, publications, talks and now for the first time an exhibition. This project will have a series of events and other activities attached. More information soon.

 

Image

Thames Log:
Chloe Dewe Mathews

20 May - 29 August 2021
Thu-Sun 10.00-17.00
VENUE: Martin Parr Foundation
 

Chloe Dewe Mathews spent five years photographing up and down the River Thames, from its puddling source to great estuary mouth. The resulting series of work, Thames Log, examines the ever-changing nature of our relationship to water, from ancient pagan festivities through to the rituals of modern life.

In Thames Log, Dewe Mathews focuses on lives that overlap regularly with the river but often go unnoticed — ship spotters, who log the continual stream of vessels that pass through Tilbury, and mudlarks as they comb the city sludge for Roman and Saxon treasure. In the countryside, above the tidal river, she encounters a druid coracle builder, a mass baptism and the annual census of royal swans. 

MORE INFO
Image

WITH-IN

FIRECRACKER 10 YEARS ANNIVERSARY

WITH-IN is a celebration of firecracker, an organization who has been supporting the work of female photographers for over 10 years with mentoring, publications, talks and now for the first time an exhibition. This project will have a series of events and other activities attached. More information soon.

 

Image

The Floating Harbour:
Jem Southam

Opening 18 June - 31st October 2021
Tue-Fri 10.30-15.30 | Sat & Sun 9.00-17.00 
VENUE: Underfall Yard
 

The Floating Harbour, is a series of photographs of Bristol Harbour made in the late 1970s by Jem Southam providing a unique and definitive portrait of the harbour at a time of rapid change. One of Southam’s first major projects, the photographs were published in ‘Floating Harbour’ (1983) and majority of the works will be exhibited here for the first time. 

MORE INFO
Image

WITH-IN

FIRECRACKER 10 YEARS ANNIVERSARY

WITH-IN is a celebration of firecracker, an organization who has been supporting the work of female photographers for over 10 years with mentoring, publications, talks and now for the first time an exhibition. This project will have a series of events and other activities attached. More information soon.

 

Image

Growing Spaces:
Chris Hoare

18 June - 26 September 2021
Mon - Sun 9.00-18.00
VENUE: Royal Fort Gardens
 

Growing Spaces by photographer Chris Hoare is a chronicle of urban land cultivation in Bristol. Since April 2020, Hoare has been slowly and methodically documenting the allotment-goers, landscape and seasonal changes across the official and unofficial growing spaces of the city. The resulting photographs, originally commissioned by Bristol Photo Festival, are published in this new book Growing Spaces to coincide with an exhibition of the work at the inaugural festival in summer 2021.

Hoare’s project documents eleven sites across the city from established allotment sites to community gardens and improvised plots on disused lands. The project was conceived pre-Covid-19 pandemic but its timing, coinciding with increased demand for green spaces for cultivating produce, allowed him to capture the formation and energy of a growing renaissance. 

MORE INFO
Image

WITH-IN

FIRECRACKER 10 YEARS ANNIVERSARY

WITH-IN is a celebration of firecracker, an organization who has been supporting the work of female photographers for over 10 years with mentoring, publications, talks and now for the first time an exhibition. This project will have a series of events and other activities attached. More information soon.

 

Image

© Sibusiso Bheka

© Jenna Garrett

© Debshudda

© Kelly O'Brien

© Billy Barraclough

© Maria Gracia Cebrecos

Elective Affinities

Billy Barraclough - Debsuddha - Jenna Garrett - Kelly O’Brien - Maria Gracia Cebrecos - Sibusiso Bheka 
 
18 June - 30 July 2021 
Wed-Sat 11.30-16.30 

VENUE: BPF Gallery

Old Post Office (Castle Park Entrance)
Unit CG13, Castle Gallery,
Bristol, BS1 3XD
 
 

The tension between culture and nature is a matchmaking force that has occupied our minds for centuries. In a current system that dehumanises and separates, ‘Elective Affinities’ brings together a series of personal stories that investigate universal themes inviting the reader's reflection on the human condition. Through six visual essays, these authors observe connections between people, their beliefs and actions by exploring family narratives, the process of grief and loss, the margins of social standards, mythological representations, the relation between faith and place and the impact of urban racial segregation. The programme is directed by IC Visual Lab in collaboration with Bristol Photo Festival.

MORE INFO

WITH-IN

FIRECRACKER 10 YEARS ANNIVERSARY

WITH-IN is a celebration of firecracker, an organization who has been supporting the work of female photographers for over 10 years with mentoring, publications, talks and now for the first time an exhibition. This project will have a series of events and other activities attached. More information soon.

 

Image

Grey Areas:
Jessie Edwards-Thomas 

1 June - 1 September 2021
Tue-Sat 11.00-18.00 | Sun 11.00-17.00
VENUE: AROLFINI

16 Narrow Quay Bristol BS1 4QA

 

Jessie Edwards-Thomas has co-designed and co-produced Grey Areas, a photographic dialogue with five individuals with complex needs who are currently within or have experienced the ‘homelessness pathway’ in Bristol. The work was created during the winter of 2020/21, the year of the pandemic; when our basic needs for shelter and safety were highlighted across the nation. Our concerns were rooted in the question ‘what does Home mean to our sense of Wellbeing?' What is continuing to happen to our city spaces which is pushing people further and further away, physically, mentally and socially? Grey Areas reflects the impact our physical spaces have upon our mental spaces. This work does not provide answers, but asks you, the viewer, to question the broken perceptions we may hold.

This original body of work has been produced during Blueprint: Housing & Wellbeing, an artistic commission by Arnolfini and Bristol Photo Festival in collaboration with Golden Key Partnership supported by ArtFund.

 

MORE INFO
Image

WITH-IN

FIRECRACKER 10 YEARS ANNIVERSARY

WITH-IN is a celebration of firecracker, an organization who has been supporting the work of female photographers for over 10 years with mentoring, publications, talks and now for the first time an exhibition. This project will have a series of events and other activities attached. More information soon.

 

© Claudia Milena

Image

Room to Grow

A Participatory Visual Archive
18 June - 26 September 2021
Mon-Sun 9.00-17.00 
VENUE: Windmill City Farm

Philip Street Bedminster Bristol BS3 4EA 

Room to Grow is a living visual archive documenting the life in allotments taking place in Bristol and beyond. Looking at the stories and history of both allotments and allotment holders, members of the public were invited to contribute an online archive throughout 2020 and 2021 with photographs and tales. From sneaky foxes to vibrant redcurrants,  this archive aims to highlight and pay tribute to the creativity of both photography and growing.

This outdoor exhibition will be touring around Bristol City Farms and other future locations.

 

MORE INFO

© Claudia Photos:  Joanna and Serge McParlandMilena

Image

The Imaginary Living Room

1 June - 13 September 2021
Tue-Sat 11.00-18.00 | Sun 11.00-17.00

ARNOLFINI (Reading Room)

16 Narrow Quay Bristol BS1 4QA 

In collaboration with creativeShift and Arnolfini we have been running a programme of creative workshops entitled 'The Imagined Living Room' with people who have attended creativeShift's Art on Referral courses. Through the delivery of disposable photographic cameras to participate in a series of online workshops inspired by Jo Spence's photo therapy strategies, participants have been responding to one of the most important spaces during these lockdowns:The Living Room.The outcomes of these workshops will be displayed at Arnolfini (Reading room) from the1 June 2021.

 

MORE INFO

- Autumn Showcase -

Image

WITH-IN

FIRECRACKER 10 YEARS ANNIVERSARY

WITH-IN is a celebration of firecracker, an organization who has been supporting the work of female photographers for over 10 years with mentoring, publications, talks and now for the first time an exhibition. This project will have a series of events and other activities attached. More information soon.

 

Image

Dipina tsa Kganya:
Leave the light when you leave for good .
Lebohang Kganye

4 April - 31 December
The Georgian House Museum
7 Great George St, Bristol BS1 5RR
 
A film installation exploring a familial narrative that is concerned with notions of healing, enacted through gestures of naming and of cleansing. South African artist, Lebohang Kganye references family, memory and heritage. Kganye has created a new work at the Georgian House Museum as part of Bristol Photo Festival. The installation offers a response to the violence of historical erasure of names and oral traditions. The house was once home to a sugar trader and his enslaved staff. Dipina tsa Kganya invites us to reflect on the legacy of colonialism as a shared history.

 

MORE INFO
Image

Coming up for Air: Stephen Gill – A Retrospective

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

 

Celebrating thirty years of extraordinary practice, Bristol-born photographer Stephen Gill, draws together new previously un-exhibited alongside works from his iconic back catalogue, with the first UK presentation of images from award winning photographic series and book The Pillar. The exhibition explores Gill’s rich sense of space, through the flea markets and towpaths of Hackney Wick in London, to his current rural surroundings amidst the Swedish countryside.

 

MORE INFO
Image

WITH-IN

FIRECRACKER 10 YEARS ANNIVERSARY

WITH-IN is a celebration of firecracker, an organization who has been supporting the work of female photographers for over 10 years with mentoring, publications, talks and now for the first time an exhibition. This project will have a series of events and other activities attached. More information soon.

 

Image

I AM NOT INVisible:
Thilde Jensen

16 September – 19 December 2021
Martin Parr Foundation
Paintworks, 316, Arno’s Vale,
Bristol BS4 3AR, United Kingdom
Thu- Sun 10.30 – 17.30
 
 

I AM NOT INVisible 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. 

Thilde Jensen began the work that led to this project when in 2014, she met Reine and Lost, two homeless men in Syracuse, New York. Reine and Lost lived under a highway, and had survived three Upstate New York winters, huddled together on a small concrete ledge. This almost unimaginable fact, drew her into a four-year project, photographing in Gallup, New Mexico, Las Vegas, and New Orleans as well as Syracuse.

MORE INFO

© Helen Sear

© Robert Dartch

Turn to Return:
Helen Sear & Robert Darch

25 September - 23 October 2021
Wed-Sat 11.30-15.30
Centrespace Gallery
6 Leonard Ln, Bristol BS1 1EA, United Kingdom

Turn to Return brings together two series of work, ‘Within Sight’ by Helen Sear and ‘The Island’ by Robert Darch, both exhibited here for the first time. Sear’s series was made whilst repeatedly walking the same mountain passage in Majorca and Darch’s work was made in response to Britain’s vote to leave the European Union in 2016. On the surface, the series are disparate both visually and in subject matter. However, when presented and interacting within the exhibition space, further similarities become apparent.

MORE INFO

© Mareike Günsche

© Mareike Günsche

© Mareike Günsche

We Are Still Here

5 - 30 October 2020
Tuesday - Friday 11.30-16.30
The Vestibules (Park Rd)
City Hall, College Green, Bristol BS1 5TR, United Kingdom

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 into 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

MORE INFO

© Mark Simmons

Image

High Volume: Bristol Sounds

Photographs from Mark Simmons
 

23 September – 30 November 2021
Thu - 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.

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© Lua Ribeira

Birch Class:
A year in pictures

 
3-6 & 12-14 September 2021 | 11.00 – 16.00
St. Michael on The Mount Without
Bristol BS2 8DT
 

Bristol Photo Festival has collaborated with St Michaels on the Mount Primary School to support their year-long photography project  documenting the school life during the pandemic. The festival provided mentoring sessions and also worked with BPF exhibition photographer, Lua Ribeira, to deliver a workshop with the pupils during the rehearsal of their end of the year play, Twelfth Night. The workshop was inspired by her current exhibition at Bristol Museum & Art Galleries. The resulting photographs will be exhibited at St Michael's on the Mount Without's newly restored crypt in September.

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WITH-IN

FIRECRACKER 10 YEARS ANNIVERSARY

WITH-IN is a celebration of firecracker, an organization who has been supporting the work of female photographers for over 10 years with mentoring, publications, talks and now for the first time an exhibition. This project will have a series of events and other activities attached. More information soon.