Bristol Photo Festival

20 May – 24 October 2021

Royal Photographic Society | 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.

*PMS*, from the series ‘Menstruation Myths’ © Laia Abril
courtesy Les Filles du Calvaire / courtesy Royal Photographic Society

*An officer and lawyer in the Australian Special Forces*, 2020
from the series ‘Agonistes’ 2020 © Hoda Afshar
courtesy Royal Photographic Society

The exhibition refrains from explicitly linking the participating artists around an overarching theme or idea, choosing instead to present a group of one-person shows, consisting of both new work and work-in-progress, that both honour and champion each of their independent motivations and artistic practices.

IN PROGRESS explores an extensive range of issues, including personal history, cultural identity, nationality, community, migration, displacement, memory, morality, belief, responsibility and the creative process. Employing a variety of image-making techniques and approaches, the works on display interrogate and emphasise photography’s role in research, critique, discovery, documentation and self-expression, in the pursuit of both artistic and social progress.

*Seremoni Disparisyon #1 (Ritual [Dis]Appearance #1),* 2019
from the series ‘Seremoni Disparisyon (Ritual [Dis]Appearance)’
© Wildline Cadet courtesy Royal Photographic Society

*Love story*, 2019 from the series ‘Process’
© Adama Jalloh courtesy Royal Photographic Society

IN PROGRESS: Laia Abril – Hoda Afshar – Widline Cadet – Adama Jalloh – Alba Zari also references the first exhibition curated by John Szarkowski at the Museum of Modern Art – Five Unrelated Photographers: Heyman, Krause, Leibling, White, and Winogrand (1963) – which similarly presented a group of one-person shows, ‘each large enough to indicate the cumulative meaning of a body of work…emphasizing [each photographer’s] individual motivation and direction…[and] the independence and individuality of each [artist]’.

Collectively, they celebrate contemporary photography at its most diverse, dynamic and progressive.