Perfectly timed to coincide with lockdown easing, the Bristol Photo Festival is the perfect tonic for anyone looking to get out of the house and reconnect with physical photo exhibitions.
A new UK biennial festival offering a year-round programme of commissions, collaborations and exhibitions by both local and international artists, the Bristol Photo Festival is open now, until the autumn.
Bristol's association with photography has got stronger in recent years with both the arrival of the Royal Photographic Society's headquarters and gallery, and the opening of the Martin Parr Foundation in the city.
The inaugural event’s programme sees a summer showcase of photography exhibitions across the city followed by a full autumn programme of festival exhibitions and events including a book fair, film programme, talks series and symposiums.
The summer exhibitions include work by Laia Abril, James Barnor, Chloe Dewe Mathews, Jessa Fairbrother, Adama Jalloh, Lua Ribeira, Jem Southam, and Sarah Waiswa amongst others.
Major exhibitions will follow in the autumn by Robert Darch, Stephen Gill, Thilde Jensen, Lebohang Kganye and Helen Sear, alongside a series of outdoor shows.
The exhibitions are accompanied by a series of events, workshops and collaborations both online and offline to take the festival outside the conventional gallery space.
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While the physical exhibitions are free, visitors are welcome to make donations – on a ‘pay what you can’ basis. Plus, to attend festival events at the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, you will also need to book a time slot online beforehand.
Highlights of the Bristol Photo Festival
Island Life: photographs from the Martin Parr Foundation
18 May-31 October 2021: Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Queens Rd, Bristol BS8 1RL
‘Pay what you can’ entry; pre-book tickets here for parties of up to 6 people.
Drawing on photographs from the Martin Parr Foundation collection that show the changing fabric of our cities, society and collective identities, Island Life focuses on post-war UK and Ireland photography. The images collectively form a compelling study of national behaviour.
Island Life brings together images from more than 60 photographers including Khali Ackford, Pogus Caesar, Elaine Constantine, Sian Davey, Chris Killip, David Hurn, Ken Grant, Markéta Luskačová, Graham Smith and Tom Wood.
Thames Log | Chloe Dewe Mathews
20 May-29 August 2021: Martin Parr Foundation, 316 Paintworks, Bristol BS4 3AR
Entry: free
Photographic artist and filmmaker Chloe Dewe Mathews spent five years taking photographs up and down the banks of the River Thames, from its source in Gloucestershire to the mouth of its estuary.
The resulting series, Thames Log, examines the ever-changing nature of our relationship to water, from ancient pagan festivities through to the rituals of modern life.
A book of the project is on sale now, published by Loose Joints/ Martin Parr Foundation.
Jo Spence: From Fairy Tales to Phototherapy
18 May-20 June: Arnolfini, 16 Narrow Quay, Bristol BS1 4QA
Entry: free. Click here to book.
From Fairy Tales to Phototherapy is drawn from The Hyman Collection, one of the most comprehensive collections of Jo Spence's works, and focuses on the intersection between arts, health and wellbeing.
It celebrates Jo’s work as a photo therapist, in which she used photography as a medium to address personal trauma – reflecting on key moments in her past.
The Floating Harbour | Jem Southam
From 18 June: Underfall Yard, Cumberland Rd, Bristol BS1 6XG
One of Southam’s first major projects, this series of photographs of Bristol Harbour in the late 1970s provide a unique and definitive portrait of the harbour during a period of rapid change.
After the closure of the William Hill shipbuilding yards in 1976, Bristol’s docks were run down and almost deserted. Southam decided to embark on the creation of an archival record of the docks, using an old-fashioned plate camera, and over the five-year course of the project exposed approximately 1,000 black and white negatives.
Southam photographed sites including Bathurst Basin, Cumberland Basin, Narrow Quay and Welsh Back, alongside sets of pictures of specific types of dockland furniture – cranes, pumphouses and bridges.
Studies were made of individual buildings and their setting, and then further pictures were made of these buildings in the wider landscape.
Originally published in 1983, in The Floating Harbour, the majority of the works will now be exhibited in Bristol for the first time.
James Barnor: Ghanaian Modernist
18 May-31 October: Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Queens Rd, Bristol BS8 1RL
‘Pay what you can’ entry; pre-book tickets here for parties of up to 6 people.
Ghana’s first international press photographer, Barnor worked from his Ever Young studio when the country gained independence in 1957, and sold his pictures to the Daily Graphic and Drum magazines.
Barnor came to Britain in 1959 to photograph in London, and when he returned to Accra he established the city’s first colour photography studio, X23.
‘Ghanaian Modernist’ is a showcase for Barnor’s Black modernism, itself a fusion of pan-African futurism and 1970s style.
Lips Touched with Blood | Sarah Waiswa
18 May-31 October: Bristol Museum & Art Gallery, Queens Rd, Bristol BS8 1RL
‘Pay what you can’ entry; pre-book tickets here for parties of up to 6 people.
Collaborating with the British Empire and Commonwealth Collection (BECC) at Bristol Archives, Sarah Waiswa has created the exhibition ‘Lips Touched with Blood’.
To reframe and challenge existing narratives around colonialism, power and identity, Waiswa’s contemporary portraits of African people will be displayed alongside manipulated portraits from the archive.
Growing Spaces | Chris Hoare
18 June-18 August: Royal Fort Gardens, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UH
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 Bristol, which forms ‘Growing Spaces’.
Hoare’s project documents 11 sites across the city from established allotment sites to community gardens and improvised plots on disused lands.
The project was conceived before the 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.
The resulting photographs are a chronicle of urban land cultivation in Bristol and as well as being exhibited in the festival, will also appear in a book of the project to be published by RRB Photobooks.
Symposium: Diversity and Inclusion in Photography
21 May 2021, online 09.30-17.00 GMT
£5 per ticket: click here to book
This one-day online symposium, curated by Jennie Ricketts, is a collaboration between the Bristol Photo Festival and the Royal Photographic Society (RPS).
It will explore themes around diversity and inclusion through the work of photographers and those working within photography.
Find out more about the Bristol Photo Festival
Click here to visit the official website.
Download a festival e-flyer, which includes a map of the various locations.
Read more
Chloe Dewe Mathews discusses her new work Thames Log
