Bristol Photo Festival returns for second edition
- Text by Ben Smoke
- Photography by Hashem Shakeri
Founded in 2020, Bristol Photo Festival “aims to celebrate the power of diversity of contemporary photography”. The festival, the board of which includes Marine Merindol, Chief Operating Officer for Magnum Photos and Magnum Photographer Martin Parr, launched to ‘consolidate Bristol’s emerging reputation as a leading city for photography beyond London.’
The festival’s inaugural edition took place in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021, leading to an extended 9‑month operation period, delivering exhibitions and engagement programmes centred on the theme ‘A Sense of Place’ at venues across the city, which is the largest in England’s south west region. Almost 200,000 visitors, a quarter of which travelled from beyond the city, visited the festival with over 1,000 people taking part in public programme events including talks, workshops and symposia.
New commissions for the festival included work from Lebohang Kganye who’s commission for the Georgian House Museum went on to be shown at the Venice Biennale 2022.
Three years on and the festival is back for its second edition. Opening in autumn 2024 the festival programme will focus on a world in constant motion, centred on the theme ‘The World A Wave’. The exhibitions, education and engagement programmes will look globally, whilst retaining a local lens- reaching out to underrepresented communities and people.
Alejandro Acin, Bristol Photo Festival director told Huck, “Photography is a unique creative medium to experience the world anew. In a time of multiple crises, we need to think of images more than ever. I want the festival to be a space full of nuanced and unexpected stories that foster greater understanding of our shared world. Bristol Photo Festival’s quality and ambition is possible thanks to the great collaboration we have established with the main cultural institutions in the city and the support of funders and sponsors.”
The 2024 edition will include work from photographers across the globe including Ariella Azoulay from Israel. In 2009, Azoulay visited the International Committee of the Red Cross headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland to view archival photographs of Palestine taken between 1947 and 1950. The images document the forced displacement of the Palestinian population — an event commonly known as the ‘Nakba’. Azoulay was instructed that the archival images could not be reproduced or exhibited unless strict conditions were met, limiting the free interpretation of the material and ultimately of history itself. In response, Azoulay decided to redraw the photographs, creating a record that exists beyond the control of official narratives and archives.
Elsewhere a month-long exhibition at the city’s M Shed museum called ‘Dreamlines: Picturing Bristol’s High Streets’. In 2023, Bristol Photo Festival invited a group of photographers, all with strong ties to the city, to develop new projects across Bristol’s historic high streets and neighbourhoods. They collaborated with groups both young and old, including a local church brass band; a stitching group; a men’s social club; a food bank; and an elders acting club.
Exhibitions will be held in the city’s major visual arts institutions alongside independent and unconventional spaces, all accompanied by a wide events programme engaging with multiple aspects of the city of Bristol. All exhibitions are free with donations welcome.
For this year the Festival is developing a project with local residents and port workers from Avonmouth to create a community archive, alongside a programme of creative activities, including talks, walks, screenings and an exhibition. With Prison Education, the festival will present The Prison Mobile Library, an educational photography project across three sites in the South West of England. The opening week of the festival (16−20 October 2024) will include artists’ talks, a book fair, tours, and parties.
Bristol Photo Festival opening week is 16th — 20th October
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