PUBLIC EVENTS
The festival will include an ongoing year-round public programme of talks, workshops, masterclasses and events with local, national and international artists and professionals. Additional activities may be added in the next months.
In conversation with
Ken Grant
9 September 2021 18.00 - 19.00
Ken Grant was born in Liverpool. At 12 years old, he was photographing the cabinet-makers in his father’s workshop on Merseyside. He worked as a carpenter himself, before studying photography and later becoming a lecturer in Photography at Belfast School of Art . In his work he has photographed Liverpool and farther afield, capturing the traditions of working class life. His method is to return to communities he has grown to know.
Ken describes Raymond Carver and Gil Scott Heron as influences. Like Grant’s, their work looks at the role of traditional masculinity in the domestic sphere.
In his online talk, Ken will discuss his work, including The Close Season which is included in the exhibition Island Life: Photographs from the Martin Parr Foundation .
Photography
can be a Mirror:
Julia Carver
23 September 2021 14.00 - 14.40
As part of this programme, our curator of modern and contemporary art, Julia Carver, has curated James Barnor: Ghanaian Modernist and co-curated Island Life and Beyond the Frame at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.
In our illustrated late lunch talk, Julia will discuss some of the themes in the shows.
She will look at the changing shape of documentary photography from Humphrey Spender and the 1930s Mass Observation project in England to Vinca Petersen’s European rave scenes. She will discuss James Barnor recording the Independence of Ghana and migration to England. And she will also explore how Heather Agyepong, Jessa Fairbrother and Lua Ribeira present different perspectives on the museum’s art collections.
Jem Southam
23 September 2021
18.00 - 20.00
Underfall Yard Visitor Centre
Cumberland Road BristoL BS1 6XG
To mark Underfall Yard's exhibition of his work, you are invited to an evening of discussion with photographer Jem Southam.Underfall Yard’s exhibition of photographs of Bristol Harbour in the late 1970s by Jem Southam provide a unique and definitive portrait of the harbour on the eve of its transformation from a place of industry and work to one of leisure and recreation. One of Southam’s first major projects, the photographs were published in ‘The Floating Harbour: A Landscape History of the Bristol City Docks’ (1983) and majority of the works are being exhibited for the first time.
Underfall Yard Trust is delighted to welcome Jem to discuss the exhibition and share his experience of photographing the harbour at a time of rapid change. In addition to a talk by Jem, this informal event will allow plenty of time for questions and guest contributions. Light refreshments will be provided.
Helen Sear and
Robert Darch
25 September 2021
14:00 – 15:00
Helen Sear and Robert Darch in Conversation with Ken Grant is presented as part of Bristol Photo Festival’s Autumn Programme
Join us at the opening of Turn to Return where exhibiting artists Helen Sear and Robert Darch will be discussing their work on display and wider practice with fellow photographer, Ken Grant. At the end of the discussion, there will be time for audience questions and a chance to explore the gallery.
Symposium:
Whose gaze?
6 October 2021
10am—3.30pm
ONLINE
This symposium will use panel discussions and in-conversation sessions to delve deeper into the themes explored in the Bristol Photo Festival exhibitions at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery.
Bringing together a selection of artists featured in Island Life, Lips Touched with Blood and Beyond the Frame, the symposium will draw out some of the questions raised by the exhibitions; from class and representation, gender and voyeurism, to decolonising histories.
MPF collection Highlights |
Isaac Blease
14 October 202
18.00-19.00
ONLINE
Isaac has worked for the foundation since 2019, cataloging the hundreds of thousands of prints and photobooks within the collection.
These include works by Tony Ray-Jones, Chris Killip, Shirley Baker, Pogus Caesar, and Vinca Petersen, all of whom feature in our Island Life exhibition. It’s a collection that tells many stories in Britain and Ireland through photography, from the post-war period onward. Together these works trace the ever-changing fabric of society.
In this talk Isaac will discuss the many highlights within the Martin Parr Foundation collection – as well as the ones that got away.
BOP 21
22- 24 October 2021
This year BOP is in collaboration with Bristol Photo Festival, and will be held across Martin Parr Foundation, the Royal Photographic Society and the Paintworks Event Space, Bristol.
BOP – Books on Photography – is an annual festival bringing together a wide-ranging group of photobook publishers, booksellers and photographers from across Europe. The festival provides an opportunity for photographers, book lovers and collectors to seek out new photobooks directly from publishers and artists, alongside a programme of talks, book signings, street food, coffee and beer.
There will be over 40 stall holders showcasing new work. A full list of photobook publishers and speakers will be announced soon.
Follow @BOP_bristol on Instagram for more information as it is released.
BOP is produced by the Martin Parr Foundation and the Royal Photographic Society.
Fundraising Auction
Launching online on 30 September 2021
To raise funds to continue the work of Bristol Photo Festival into its second edition, we will be hosting an online auction with submissions by participating festival photographers and by wider photography friends and artists including Heather Agyepong, Ken Grant, Karen Knorr (pictured above), Niall McDiarmid, Daniel Meadows, Susan Meiselas, Peter Mitchel, Martin Parr, Max Pinckers, Mark Power, Clementine Schneidermann, Helen Sear, Alec Soth, Mark Power, Paul Reas, Tom Wood and many more. The works will be viewable and biddable online from 15 September until Sunday 24 October. A selection of prints will be available to view at Bristol Photo Festival stall at BOP to coincide with the final weekend of bidding.
- PAST EVENTS -
In conversation with
Lua Ribeira
12 August 2021 | 18.00-19.00 | ONLINE
Craving Gaps is the title of photographer Lua Ribeira’s intervention in our Renaissance and Modern art galleries. The gaps are spaces for interpretation that Lua prises from traditional art historical narratives.
In this online talk, Lua will talk about these works and more. In the Renaissance and Baroque gallery her images of people at the US and Mexico border and Spain and Morocco border are positioned beside the famous image of Christ in Limbo by Giovanni Bellini and the Annunciation to the Shepherds by Nicholas Berchem. Her Aristocrats series is shown beside portraits of the nobility.
Photo Hub Open House
Royal Photography Society & Martin Parr Foundation, Paintworks.
14 August 2021 | 10.00-20.00
The Martin Parr Foundation are holding a joint event with The Royal Photographic Society and UWE Bristol, to mark the reopening of the galleries and the launch of UWE’s upcoming graduate publication, Solid Air. Join us for a day of photography, exhibition tours and student artist talks, with street food by Bristol Eats and a pop-up bar by Lost and Grounded.
Talk with Jessa Fairbrother
8 July 2021 | ONLINE | FREE
Artist Jessa Fairbrother’s intervention at Bristol Museum & Art Gallery for Bristol Photo Festival reflects on the work of the Pre-Raphaelites: a brotherhood of English artists founded in 1848.
SYMPOSIUM
DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN PHOTOGRAPHY
ONLINE | May 21 2020 | BOOK TICKETS
The Symposium 'Inclusive Collaboration: Commitment to Change’, aims to demonstrate the diversity of practitioners within the photographic community. The keynote speaker is Vanley Burke, and other confirmed speakers include Joy Gregrory, Dexter McLean, David Constantine, Joanne Coates, Kirsty MacKay, and Dr Shawn Sobers. Produced by Jennie Ricketts. There will be a second symposium in autumn 2021.
Photo-Poetry Surfaces
ONLINE (ZOOM) | 17 June 2021 | 7pm | FREE
As part of the Bristol Photo Festival, the photo-poetry activities (organized by David Solo, Astra Papachristodoulou and Paul Hawkins) will be exploring and presenting a range of photo-poetic works. The program will map out the range of combinations in photo-poetic works (and sometimes going outside the lines), exhibit a selection of current examples, and present mixed media presentations of the work. There will also be a series of conversations about the nature of such collaborations, how such material may be “read” and looking at ways to assess or evaluate it.
Too Many Blackmoores
ONLINE TALK BY HEATHER AGYEPONG
10 JUNE 2021 | 14.00 | FREE
Ageypong’s art practice deals with wellbeing, particularly the experience of invisibility for diaspora communities. She often re-imagines archival material using herself to embody a historical character. The process of making the art usually aims to achieve a catharsis for herself and the viewers.
This period of history saw the expansion of horizons through travel and science, underpinned by the expansion of the British Empire and colonial rule. Agyepong’s series of work, ‘Too Many Blackamoors’ is inspired by the story of Lady Sarah Forbes Bonetta. She was an orphaned child from Dahomy (a pre-colonial African kingdom located within present-day Benin) who was adopted by a British captain and later by Queen Victoria.
MPF Photo Chat
ONLINE CONVERSATION BETWEEN CHLOE DEWE MATTHEWS & GARETH EVANS
10 JUNE 2021 | 19.00 | TICKET FEE
Chloe Dewe Mathews will be joined by Gareth Evans (Whitechapel Gallery) to discuss Thames Log, Chloe’s latest work created over five years of photographing up and down the river Thames.
In Thames Log, Chloe Dewe Mathews examines the ever-changing nature of our relationship to water. From the source of the river Thames to its mouth, Chloe has photographed people enacting a range of rituals and routines at the water’s edge. She has observed traditional, collective ceremonies as well as privately improvised acts; from ship spotting, mud larking and ceremonial boat burning, to Pentecostal baptisms, coracle missions and teenage rites of passage.