In Praise of Anonymous Photography 

At the medieval Cloître Saint-Trophime, a collection of images put together by Marion and Philippe Jacquier draws attention to why we take photographs, if they’re not intended for publication or wider display. In Praise of Anonymous Photography harks back to flicking through family photo albums but it also encompasses eroticism and war, all explored through the lenses of unknown image-makers. Jean’s Album creates a photographic map of a brief relationship between a young couple, for example, photographs of streets marked with red crosses and scribbled with notes offering a view of 1930s Paris through the misty eyes of heartbreak. Elsewhere are self-portraits of Lucette, an older woman who photographed herself in her travels around the world, between 1954 and 1977. Documenting the many exciting locations she visited, the images also seem to affirm – as they do for so many – ‘I was here, I matter’.

An Assembly of Sceptics, 2025 Discovery Award Louis Roederer Foundation 

Upstairs at the Monoprix, one of Arles’ best venues, the Discovery Award show presents seven new, much-needed voices in photography; Octavio Aguilar, Julie Joubert, Heba Khalifa, Daniel Mebarek, Musuk Nolte, Zuzana Pustaiová, and Denis Serrano. The works tackle male mental health in Mexico, media distrust in Slovakia, and female memory in Cairo; from Amazonian rituals to indigenous language revival, each project uses photography to navigate identity, displacement, and history. Curated by César González-Aguirre, the show feels personal and political, the latter a note somewhat lacking elsewhere in the festival; viewers are invited to reimagine the present through each artist’s very specific lens.

Julie Joubert’s Patria Nostra is an intimate look at the French Foreign Legion, for example, a place where young men from elsewhere come to rebuild their lives. Joubert explores how identity gets reshaped under pressure, where discipline and uniformity mask complex personal histories. She zeroes in on physicality, how a posture or scar can quietly betray emotion, while raising sharp questions about nationalism, sacrifice, and the value we place on certain lives. Surreal and sensual, this work went on to win the Public Award and was a favourite for many in the opening week. 

Retratistas do Morro, João Mendes and Afonso Pimenta, Reflections from Serra Community, Belo Horizonte (1970-1990)

Retratistas do Morro is a rich tribute to João Mendes and Afonso Pimenta, two self-taught photographers who have spent decades documenting life inside the Serra favela in Belo Horizonte, southeastern Brazil. Conceived by artist Guilherme Cunha, the project is part archive, part living memory, including over 250,000 photographs to reveal a deeply local, often-overlooked history. The selected images displayed at Arles capture everyday beauty and resilience, offering a counter-narrative to the ways in which favelas are so often portrayed. The work transforms nostalgia into a statement on agency, representation, and remembering and, through these portraits, the community sees itself.

ENSP Generation – Calista Bizzari Malou, Mathis Clodic and Rıfat Göbelez

Featuring three new graduates from Arles’ École nationale supérieure de la photographie, ENSP Generation includes stand-out, innovative work by emerging artist Mathis Clodic. Re-entering the dusty digital ruins of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, a game that shaped a generation, Clodic gathers glitchy, half-forgotten “Out of Map” landscapes, eerie memory spaces frozen in 2009, where burning helicopters are still smouldering in An Eternal Wasteland. Using wet collodion photography, he turns discarded game avatars into ghostly portraits, fragile and strangely human, while in his video piece, Le Dormeur du Val, he overlays this virtual terrain with Rimbaud’s poetry, suggesting a soldier forever asleep. Clodic’s work feels like a digital archaeology, less about gaming, more about memory, trauma, and the emotional residue left behind in our virtual playgrounds.

Strangers, Jia Yu, 2024 Jimei x Arles Discovery Award winner 

Located a few metres past Arles train station in a disused SNCF train hangar, Jia Yu’s Strangers is a mixed media exhibition combining video interviews shown on screens, portraits displayed bare to the wall, and objects laid in a case. An important demonstration of photography’s power to build, honour and affirm memory, the paired-back installation lets Yu’s work speak for itself. Yu, an elementary school teacher from the Tibetan region, has been working with communities on the Tibetan Plateau for over 20 years, making work collaboratively and with their permission; alongside the portraits are videos of Yu’s return visits, in which he tracks down his subjects and gives them prints of their images. This act of exchange is important; one girl had never previously had her portrait taken and, seeing her younger self for the first time, reflects on the passage of time. Yu also displays the gifts given to him by the communities, including yak rope, clay, and medicinal herbs; some gifts are less material, the girl singing him a traditional song, for example, sharing her voice in thanks. 

Ancestral Futures – Brazilian Contemporary Scene 

At the back of the Eglise de Trinitaires, Bahaina artist Glicéria Tupinambá’s film Dancing with the Tupinambá displays the powerful process of reclaiming tradition, via crafting a sacred Tupinambá cloak. The cloak, made from the feathers of indigenous birds, has become a symbol of reclamation because many of the oldest surviving cloaks are now held by Western museums, locked away on display and far from home. Presented as a triptych, Tupinambá’s film showcases the sacred process of constructing these cloaks, which are made collectively by women in their villages; the women patiently wait for the birds to shed feathers, then use intricate, historic sewing techniques to add them together. The triptych form offers a sensory and immersive viewing experience, incorporating the natural landscape, the water, and the community as well as the finished item; visuals of the land and soundscapes of the water are layered as the women display their working process. The film offers a powerful insight into a collective process of craftsmanship, which also builds connection to the environment.

Octahydra, Batia Suter 

Batia Suter works with images found in flea-market books and magazines; her always-interesting assemblages divorce the shots from their original contexts, rendering them mysterious, oblique, even sinister. Down in the cryptoportiques, damp underground chambers that date back to the Roman era, Suter is showing images of architecture, from the monumental to the homely, which she’s digitally enhanced and confused. Some of these images are simply propped up on ledges, but the show-stopping aspect of this exhibition is the installation created by architect Sami Rintala, which combines gauzy screens onto which the images are displayed, leak and combine. An environment rather than a show, Octahydra envelops the visitor in light and shade, toying with our perception of space, the 2D nature of photography, how we understand planes. At the end of the dark tunnel a further slideshow offers diaphanous images of plastic packaging, designed to encase but remain largely unseen. An exhibition about display, Octahydra therefore questions the medium of photography, and our mental and physical relationship with it. 

Losing North, Carine Krecke

Housed in the jewel-like Chapelle de la charité, Carine Krecke’s Losing the North wilfully ignores its location, inserting huge black box screens with deliberate disregard for the surrounding beauty. Like the monolith in 2001AD, this work arrives to impart stark information, disrupting the existing environment; Krecke’s short films are about the Syrian civil war and what we saw of it in the West, and her position when working with this material. She started making the videos in 2018, when she stumbled on images charting the destruction of Arbin, a town in the suburbs of Damascus, hidden in Google Maps. Her works also encompass images and identities constructed on social media, and ways in which President Bashar al-Assad – and his hangers-on – presented themselves. “Why do some conflicts disappear into black holes of information?” Krecke asks in one of her voice-overs, a good question, and particularly good at Arles, which once again steered clear of exhibitions about Gaza or Palestine. Krecke’s intense work requires lengthy and even repeated viewings, disrupting the urge to try to zip around shows, to tick off works rather than think and really engage. Losing the North does also beg questions though, such as why it’s the Western perspective, credited to a Western artist, how much we might move beyond the Global North.

Nan Goldin, presentation at the 2025 Kering Women in Motion Award for Rencontres d’Arles, 08 July, Théâtre Antique

One of the most-discussed events of the opening week was Nan Goldin’s presentation at the Women in Motion Award prize-giving. In the Théâtre Antique, a 1st-century UNESCO World Heritage site, almost 2500 people sat under a clear night sky as she showed images, accompanied by a live pianist. After a short Q&A with the festival director, Christoph Wiesner, Goldin was accompanied on stage by French writer Édouard Louis; the word ‘Gaza’ appeared as a giant projection behind them, and the audience started to applaud. What followed was a roughly ten-minute presentation of smartphone footage from across Gaza, showing bread-making, market stalls, children playing games, and bombs, blood, and destruction. As the video came to a close, Goldin and Louis delivered a statement about what is happening in Gaza, Louis adding; “Within a month more 600 people have been killed during food distribution”. At this point a woman from the audience shouted, and it was hard to hear exactly but it sounded like “What about the hostages?” An impassioned exchange followed, between this individual and several supporters, and Goldin – plus other members of the audience, some of whom chanted ‘Free Palestine’. 

NO-PHOTO 2025 – No Photo / Double Dummy Studio 

An intervention rather than an official exhibition, NO-PHOTO 2025 appeared in the streets. Created and pasted to the walls by volunteers, each display included two posters, one displaying a large black square and a picture credit, the other a text description of what was on the shot. “A bicycle lays on the pavement. As one looks on, four stray cats crawl over a dead body in search of food,” read one, credited to Amr Khaled, Gaza, 4 February 2024; others described similarly desperate scenes. In doing so, NO-PHOTO 2025 inserted the ongoing genocide in Gaza into Les Rencontres d’Arles and commented on its absence, in the festival and beyond. Becoming some of the most-shared shots of Arles online, these sites also showed others noting this presence and absence, and their appetite to talk about both. 

Les Recontres d’Arles is on show until 05 October 2025.

Better Entry has partnered with graphic designer Bráulio Amado, known for his work with Frank Ocean, Danny Brown, and Charli XCX, to create a campaign flyer announcing the raffle. Additionally, each disposable camera has been decorated by the participating artists, making each piece a collectible work of art.

For the live raffle, all entries will be collected online via BetterUnite. Supporters can participate by purchasing entries for any of the six disposable cameras, making donations to support the cause, or sharing the initiative to raise awareness.

BJP catches up with Better Entry founders Jared Witherspoon and Chanel Ghazi Alorsan to learn more about the initiative.

BJP: Could you tell us how the project was launched and how it came to fruition?

Jared Witherspoon and Chanel Ghazi Alorsan: Through our collective, Better Entry, we often work to facilitate projects centered on public service and bridging the gap between established creatives and those aspiring towards the creative industry. The two of us also work as freelancers within the editorial fashion space and have a deep passion for photography. Considering the Gaza–Israel conflict is one of the most significant humanitarian crises facing modern media, paired with Chanel’s personal experience as a Palestinian-American, we felt that this project would be a viable way for us to show solidarity to a noble cause in connection with our passions and resources as artists. 

BJP: What is the role of the camera in the daily lives of Gazans today?

JW & CGA: The camera serves as one of the most compelling tools for communicating the everyday experiences of Gazans today. Aside from the Gaza crisis being one of the most significant catastrophes in the world, it is also one of the most censored crises in Western media. This is why it was vital for us to include Fathi as a contributing artist for this project. 

BJP: What do you hope the disposable cameras capture?

JW & CGA: Through the artists we’ve brought together, we hope that their disposable cameras will provide a deeper insight into their day-to-day processes, inspirations, creations, and personal experiences as artists. It’s a window into their world, similar to how Fathi is providing a window into his.

BJP: And what impact will this project have?

JW & CGA: Aside from raising funds to help support mutual aid efforts surrounding the crisis, we hope that this project will inspire others to consider new ways to combine community and personal interests to help navigate feasible options for supporting initiatives greater than themselves.

Enter the raffle via BetterUnite here
@better.entry 

“Photography and imaging is a weapon – I use it to contradict and undermine”

– Rene Matić 

Matić’s work will go on show at Cartwright Hall Art Gallery from 27 September to 22 February 2026 as part of the Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture programme, alongside work by the three other nominated artists. Kalu was nominated for her graphic, drawing and sculptural work, as presented as part of Conversations at Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, and Hanging Sculpture 1 to 10 at Manifesta 15, Barcelona; Sami was nominated for his solo exhibition After the Storm at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, a series of large-scale paintings drawing on his life in Baghdad during the Iraq War and as a refugee in Sweden. Xa was nominated for her presentation Moonlit Confessions Across Deep Sea Echoes: Your Ancestors Are Whales, and Earth Remembers Everything with Benito Mayor Vallejo at Sharjah Biennial 16, which interweaves painting, mural, textile and sound. 

The winner will be announced in Bradford on 09 December, and will receive £25,000, while the three other shortlisted artists will each receive £10,000. Along with Sam Lackey, the 2025 Turner Prize jury this year included Andrew Bonacina, independent curator; Priyesh Mistry, Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary Projects, The National Gallery; and Habda Rashid, Senior Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Fitzwilliam Museum. The jury was chaired by Alex Farquharson, Director, Tate Britain. 

Established in 1984, the Turner Prize has only been awarded to a photographer once – Wolfgang Tillmans in 2000. However other previous winners work with photography and found images alongside other media, such as Jasleen Kaur (2024) and Charlotte Prodger (2018). In 2019 Tai Shani, who works with photography, film, installation and performance, shared the prize with Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, and Oscar Murillo, after all four nominees requested the jury not select a winner. In 2020 the Turner Prize was cancelled owing to the Covid pandemic, and 10 artists, including photographer Liz Johnson Artur, were instead each awarded a £10,000 grant.

Born in Peterborough in 1997, Rene Matić graduated with a BA in Fine Art from Central St Martins in 2017, and lives and works in London. An artist and writer, their work engages with themes of post-Blackness, feminism and class, and – inspired by ska and 2-Tone music and dance – aims for a ‘rudeness’ that celebrates interruption and in-betweeness. Their debut show at Vitrine Gallery in 2020 was titled Born British, Die British, and was a ‘love letter’ to their father, as well as an investigation of ‘Britishness’. In 2022 Matić had an exhibition at South London Gallery titled Upon This Rock, which explored what it means to be British, and included a film of their father; in 2023 they showed A Girl for the Living Room at Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol. 

In 2021 they published a photobook titled Flags for Countries That Don’t Exist but Bodies That Do. “My dad doesn’t have any pictures of himself when he was younger, and the Black side of my family has no pictures because they moved around so much in England, when they couldn’t get a permanent place to stay,” Matić told BJP at that time. “So my granddad was constantly packing up, and things got left behind. As someone who’s always looking for where I’ve come from, it was like, OK, so that’s not possible… [This book] is where I’ve come from. And when we’re older, we’ll look back and be like, ‘That’s where we came from’.”

BJP’s Dalia Al-Dujaili interviewed Matić earlier this year, and found the artist working on a solo exhibition at Arcadia Missa, Idols Lovers Mothers Friends, a meditation on love on show from 25 April to 03 June 2025, featuring prints Matić made herself in the darkroom. “Photography and imaging is a weapon – I use it to contradict and undermine,” Matić told Al-Dujaili. “I am taking [the] next year as an opportunity to refine my image-making practice.”

Turner Prize 2025 is on show at Cartwright Hall, Bradford from 27 September to 22 February 2026. Idols Lovers Mothers Friends is on show at Arcadia Missa from 25 April to 03 June 2025

“We invite everyone to reflect on the challenges we face, from global crises like climate change and migration to personal struggles related to identity, freedom, and social issues”

Jodi Kwok, curator of FORMAT and QUAD arts centre, and Jenna Eady, FORMAT co-ordinator

Over in Chapel Street, Christopher Gregory-Rivera presents a jaw-dropping work titled El Gobierno Te Odia [The Government Hates You], using images made by the US government of its own citizens. From the 1940s to 1987 the Puerto Rican Police, in collaboration with the FBI and CIA, watched, intimidated, and attacked political activists in the archipelago, which remains a US territory. The secret operation tracked over 150,000 people and compiled dossiers on over 15,000; it only came to light in 1987, after a long investigation into the execution of two university students by the Puerto Rico Police Intelligence Division. The dossiers were returned to those tracked and, as with the Stasi in East Germany, showed that friends, relatives, and neighbours had all been involved in the surveillance, creating lasting divisions for a population in which victims and spies still live side-by-side. 

Gregory-Rivera’s work demonstrates that individuals were sometimes aware they were being watched, creating a panopticon effect in which everyone had to constantly modify their behaviour; the secret police has since been disbanded but this means of control continues, Gregory-Rivera including a video from 2017 in his installation. Made by the police, it documents lawful protestors, some of whom went on to be wrongfully arrested; in the ensuing court case, it transpired that there were many other videos, and that Facebook had shared personal data and conversations from individuals who had interacted with online footage of protests. These examples have ramifications for citizens everywhere, and Gregory-Rivera has also made a book of this work which deserves to be widely seen. 

The showstopper of FORMAT is Felicity Hammond’s installation at QUAD, V2: Rigged, the second iteration of her ongoing project, Variations. Supported by Photoworks and Ampersand Foundation, Variations is an ambitious project around data mining and AI; the first variation, V1: Content Aware, popped up in a public square in Brighton in October 2024 at the Photoworks Weekender. Ostensibly a shipping container, V1: Content Aware included a camera recording those passing by, and V2: Rigged includes images generated from that footage. Many of those who had interacted with V1 had taken photographs of it, notes Hammond, and when she fed images of them into an AI generator, it churned out depictions of men wielding hybrid camera-weapons. 

Hammond’s response is a large installation with a similarly sinister edge; part-camera, part-drill, part-processing plant, it is extracting further data from visitors, while a huge mirrored wall alludes to both their surveillance and an endless duplication of images. A large pixellated backdrop includes some of the AI images of men generated after V1: Content Aware, “documentary expressions of society’s views of itself” as Hito Steyerl has put it (quoted in the festival catalogue). The next iteration of Variations, V3: Model Collapse, goes on show at The Photographers’ Gallery in London in summer and will lean further into escalations of our collective imagination; the final variation at Stills Gallery, Edinburgh will investigate how data is corralled and catalogued.

Next to Hammond’s work, Sujata Setia’s A Thousand Cuts also suggests (male) surveillance and control. Working in the UK with domestic violence survivors from the South Asian diaspora, Setia made portraits then sliced intricate patterns into the prints. Inspired by the tradition of Sanjhi art, these cuts afford the women depicted anonymity, suggesting a means of escape but also the lasting impact of their experiences. Setia collaborated with the women to make their portraits and the carved motifs, allowing them to govern their own depiction, just as they have retaken control of their lives; she also recorded interviews which are included in the installation, testifying to how they fell into abuse, and how they managed to escape. The colour red dominates, signifying the optimism of marriage – red is the traditional colour for South Asian wedding dresses – and the violence all too often perpetrated at home. 

An unholy mix of the everyday and the ultraviolent runs through the exhibition OUR RIUKZAK at University of Derby too, a group show of work by Ukrainian photographers curated by Lesia Maruschak. Combining images of the Ukrainian Holodomor famine-genocide of 1933-34 with photographs of the contemporary conflict, it is designed as a portable exhibition-in-a-box which can pop up in various venues. The title references the rucksacks into which families stuff scant essentials before fleeing home, and the present-day images focus on children; there are powerful shots of terrified parents running into hospital with bleeding infants, and buggies being pushed through chaos. Another nearby group show of work from Ukraine strikes on a more complicated note, however; On the Thorns of Evil Ages includes portraits of armed forces volunteers made by Anton Shevelov, an Officer of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Special Correspondent of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

Elsewhere are other series around physical conflict. Jenna Garrett’s Teeth of the Wolf is an eerie exploration of armed vigilantes in the US, for example, inspired when she saw online images of Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, standing in front of the State Capitol shortly before his fellow protestors stormed the building. Garrett was reminded of images of the Bald Knobbers, a group that sprung up in the Ozark Mountains after the American Civil War, which was responsible for lynchings, beatings, and arson. America’s volatile political situation also surfaces in Alicia Bruce’s The Greatest 36 Holes? Coming Soon, which shows a golf course Donald Trump built in Scotland. Constructed on an area designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest, this course attracted considerable local opposition and though Trump announced it in 2006, long before becoming US president, is a cautionary tale foreshadowing his pronouncements on Gaza and Greenland. 

Intriguing images made during World War One by the still-running WW Winter portrait studio show German officers in internment camps; the officers look curiously pampered, suggesting either propaganda at work, or special treatment for the upper class. Elsewhere are interesting installations around the environment, including Lo Lai Lai Natalie’s The Days Before the Silent Spring, and Xueyi Huang’s AI project, No.27 Tong Poo Road. Other exhibitions feel perhaps more tangential, including an exhibition of Michael Omerod’s American roadtrips at the University, and John Blakemore’s Earthly Delights at the Museum of Making. Maybe they testify to the needs of external venues included in the festival (Museum of Making just acceded some of Blakemore’s prints), or the wide appeal required of a public event.

Dancing Through Time also speaks to wide appeal but in a more lively way; an archive of images, ephemera, and oral history, on show in a former clothes shop, it traces the progress of music and clubs in Derby, of shared experiences that build cohesion rather than conflict. It also celebrates the DIY ethos of punk, particularly necessary in a small city, and offering potential solutions amid contemporary funding cuts for musicians and artists. Upstairs, Francis Augusto’s Ghost Notes does something similar, showing one-time stalwarts of Derby’s punk scene today; these elders have much to teach younger generations about self-organisation and making things happen. 

The reclaimed store feels appropriate but actually we are far from the freedom of 1960s and 70s squats; in 2012 UK laws around property tightened up, and using this venue took months of careful negotiation. FORMAT continues to be a critical plank in the UK’s photography ecology, but how it will evolve in the current political and economic climate remains to be seen. The same can be said of photography, and it is a strength of Kwok’s curation that perhaps the biggest conflict on show here is around images, how they are used and by whom.

The FORMAT International Photography Festival exhibitions are open until various dates; for details check www.formatfestival.com. BJP is a FORMAT Festival sponsor

“I really wanted to try to explore the complex relationships pigeon keepers had with one another, their birds, but also the rest of Lebanese society”

Kash Hamam is a practice deeply embedded in Levantine culture. With over 200 pigeon keepers across Beirut, it’s a game and a lifestyle that has been passed down through generations. This pigeon war requires not only a keen understanding of pigeons’ homing instincts but also a deft hand at strategy. As Barraclough observed, each keeper cultivates unique techniques, carefully-crafted feed, and tricks designed to attract a neighbour’s birds. It’s an artful dance between tradition, skill, healthy competition, and camaraderie.

Kash Hamam is a portrait of pigeon-keepers who are isolated yet devoted. Pigeon keepers are often seen as outcasts, and sometimes vilified by Lebanese society. A long-standing law bars pigeon keepers from providing legal testimony, “They’re slandered as thieves, liars, and criminals,” says Barraclough. “Both physically and politically separate from the city, the men and their lofts share an intense relationship of love that continues despite the hardships that come with keeping birds. I really wanted to try to explore the complex relationships pigeon keepers had with one another, their birds, but also the rest of Lebanese society.”

Kash Hamam is Barraclough’s second major project in Lebanon, following his earlier series, I Trust in God, which quietly brings Lebanon’s layered sectarian landscape to the surface through quotidien imagery. The roots of Barraclough’s connection to Lebanon trace back to his late father, a writer and photographer who worked for Oxfam and Medical Aid for Palestinians. “I always knew about my father’s love for the region,” Barraclough reflects. “It felt natural to establish my own connection.” As he worked with an NGO in Lebanon, Barraclough began to deepen his understanding of the country’s intricate social fabric, a journey that ultimately translated into a desire to capture Beirut’s people and their stories.

The gap between both series is thematically not so different, though Barraclough’s style has matured and evolved. Nevertheless, he says he remains committed to a style rooted in the raw honesty of medium-format photography – a technique he taught himself. “It was a pretty free but failure-ridden approach, which definitely had a certain charm to it,” he recollects. 

As Beirut and South Lebanon face mounting challenges under current Israeli bombardment, Barraclough has chosen an image from Kash Hamam to fundraise for Lebanon through the Eyeuna Initiative. The photograph depicts two young boys in Bourj Hammoud, watching pigeons soar between apartment blocks. For Barraclough, this image has become a symbol of his hope for Lebanon. 

“Lebanon is a country that gave me so much and made me feel so eternally welcome, comfortable, excited and happy,” Barraclough says. “It’s a beautiful place that is currently under extreme pressure and the number of displaced people in such a small nation is horrifying. I hope this image and the other images in the fundraiser can begin to contribute towards supporting displaced people across the country at this moment.” The pigeon in flight, a recurring theme in his project, has long served as a symbol of peace. Here, it serves as both a tribute to the country and a call to action.

billybarraclough.com

Fundraising Prints for Lebanon

“I am committed to this work because I’ve seen how photography can be a transformative medium for children, especially in communities that have experienced displacement and conflict.”

Dalia Al-Dujaili: How is Fotohane Darkroom different from your previous initiative, and why are you committed to continuing this work with the kids?

Serbest Salih: Fotohane Darkroom stands apart as a fresh and independent initiative designed specifically to focus on the powerful connection between analog photography and storytelling in the lives of children. While the core idea of using photography as a tool for emotional expression remains central, Fotohane emphasises a more localised and immersive approach. We are now concentrating on creating a space where the children can not only learn the technical aspects of photography but also explore the full process – from capturing images to developing them in a darkroom, all with hands-on experience.

This project also serves a broader geographical area, focusing on children from Iraq, Syria, and Kurdish regions. I am committed to this work because I’ve seen how photography can be a transformative medium for children, especially in communities that have experienced displacement and conflict. The impact it has on their ability to express their emotions, tell their stories, and gain a sense of control over their narrative is invaluable.

DA: What effects do photography and the project have on the children?

SS: One example that sticks with me is from a boy who photographed an old, abandoned building in his village. He said that it reminded him of how life used to be before displacement, and that photography allowed him to preserve that memory. This is just one of many instances where I’ve seen photography help these children reflect on their past and present in meaningful ways.

The project has given many of the children a way to express thoughts and feelings they might struggle to put into words. Photography allows them to see the world differently, often with curiosity and a new perspective. It helps build their confidence, not just in artistic skills but also in themselves as individuals with unique stories worth sharing. The cameras become tools of self-expression, but more importantly, they help foster a sense of identity and agency.

DA: Why are you focusing on the Iraq-Syria-Kurdish border region? What is it like working with displaced children?

Amar Kılıç: The Iraq-Syria-Kurdish region is deeply significant due to the high levels of displacement and conflict it has endured. We chose to focus here because the children in these areas often lack access to creative opportunities, yet they have a profound need to express themselves. Photography, particularly analogue, offers a universal form of communication that bridges language barriers, cultural differences, and trauma in ways other forms of expression may not.

Working with displaced children is a complex and delicate experience. These children often arrive feeling isolated or burdened by their experiences. However, through photography, they find a safe space to explore their emotions and thoughts. It’s not just about learning a skill – it’s about creating a sense of belonging and giving them the ability to tell their stories. Seeing them gain confidence in both their creative abilities and personal voice is the most rewarding aspect of the work.

DA: Finally, what are your next steps with Fotohane? What are you working on and how do you hope it will grow?

AK: We are working on expanding Fotohane Darkroom’s reach into more rural and hard-to-reach areas. One of our immediate goals is to set up a mobile darkroom so that we can bring the full analogue photography experience to children who live in remote villages and camps. This will allow us to ensure that more children have access to both the creative and technical aspects of the art form.

Looking ahead, we aim to foster a self-sustaining model by training older participants to become facilitators within the project. This will ensure the longevity of Fotohane Darkroom and provide leadership opportunities for young adults within the community. We are also exploring partnerships with international photographers and institutions to exhibit the children’s work globally, sharing their perspectives with the world.

Fotohane.org

“I thought that giving them the chance to embroider over any parts of their image would be a good way for them to have the last say over how much is visible in the final portrait”

“Refugees rarely have any control over their representation in the media, and the way they are represented is often dehumanising – masses of desperate people pictured during the worst moments of their lives,” Norman Bermúdez says. “My main objective was to provide the women with an opportunity to control their own image and narrative. Hmong embroidery is a symbol of their cultural identity and a creative medium that they are highly skilled at using, so I thought that it would be the best way for them to contribute to our collaboration.”

Silent Threads was then displayed at two separate events hosted by Asylum Access, a non-profit organisation working in Malaysia, Mexico and Thailand to support people who have been forcibly displaced. One event was aimed at the general public, the other towards the refugee community. It went on to be featured on local TV, helping raise awareness and funding for the NGO’s work. “The project would not have been possible without the close relationship Asylum Access has built with the community of Hmong refugees,” Norman Bermúdez says. Representatives from the NGO helped translate as the artist went to each woman’s home, and her subjects were involved when making the portraits.

Norman Bermúdez was born in Spain but moved to the UK when she was 14 years old. She went on to study at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, which taught her to look at international development from a critical, postcolonial viewpoint, she says. She became interested in how the media relates to social issues, particularly in south and south-east Asia and pursuing this interest, she took an MA in photojournalism and documentary photography at the University of the Arts London. Later she studied for an MSc in behaviour change, delving into how the media – particularly photography – influences people’s beliefs and attitudes. She moved to Thailand in 2017 to work for the UN Development Programme before going freelance in 2020.

Norman Bermúdez’s background and training give her work a humanitarian sensitivity; she was very conscious that her subjects might want to remain anonymous, as their refugee status is not legally recognised. “I thought that giving them the chance to embroider over any parts of their image would be a good way for them to have the last say over how much is visible in the final portrait,” she says. “One of the key themes that emerged during this collaboration was a tension between wanting to be seen and needing to stay hidden, which in many ways defines their experience as refugees.”

Gosen began to research these young women and others like them. She describes what she discovered as a crisis in young motherhood. With 96 cases per every 1,000 women aged between 15 and 19, the average rate of teenage pregnancy in Venezuela is double that of the rest of Latin America. While this is not a new issue for Gosen’s home country, it is one that remains underdiscussed and therefore unresolved.

The photographer began exploring this difficult topic, documenting Venezuela’s young mothers and their families in the initmate photo essay, Grandmothers at 30. The work was recently awarded the Marilyn Stafford FotoReportage Award, which is granted annually to a professional woman photographer whose work addresses an important social, environmental, economic or cultural issue. Gosen hopes the award grant of £2,500 will allow her to continue her work – and to focus on offering solutions to the many young women she’s met.

Of these women, there is one 21-year-old second-time mother whose story sticks in her mind. The photographer recalls the obstetric violence this young woman experienced, the hospitals she gave birth in that had neither water nor light, and the physical and emotional scars she was left with as a result. “These conversations are really hard to have with them,” Gosen acknowledges, “some of them are really, really traumatised.”

“The reason they were detained was that they were accused of robbery, and if you asked them, they would tell you that they were hungry and that they didn’t have a choice but to commit the crime” – Ana María Arévalo Gosen

Despite this trauma, the photographer succeeded, gradually and over a period of years, in gaining the trust of Venezuela’s young mothers. Grandmothers at 30 is a testament to the strength of the relationships she built. Thematically, the project’s images are impressive in their mundanity, indicating a complete acceptance of Gosen’s presence. Visually, they offer a striking juxtaposition between the blue skies of Venezuela, and the dark, cramped homes of the country’s young mothers.

Although these images are now award-winning, the photographer has no plans to move on from Grandmothers at 30 – instead, with the help of her recent grant, she intends to campaign for change. She is planning a documentary film that will be delivered to impacted communities, wants to bring gynaecologists and obstetricians to schools and, perhaps most importantly, hopes to contribute to a change in Venezuela’s abortion laws. “I’m already 35 years old, I already got the abortion, I already got the therapy,” Gosen says passionately. “I think in my heart, that’s one of the main reasons why I’m doing this now, because I could have been one of these girls.”

“We’re always navigating that space between online activism, real world activism, and art activism. It’s like murky waters sometimes. We wanted to bring that out of the social media bubble”

Eliza Hatch

The brief for the open call was simple: to submit work that centred around community activism and uplifting marginalised voices. “By the nature of what we both do, and how we both exist on the internet, I don’t think it could have been on anything else,” says Bee. “It was inevitable because so much of our lives are spent talking about these issues.” 

Eliza adds that they wanted to create an exhibition that had a voice and a cause. “We’re always navigating that space between online activism, real world activism, and art activism. It’s kind of like murky waters sometimes. We wanted to bring that out of the social media bubble that we’re used to,” she says. 

Both Eliza and Bee recognise that during Women’s History Month, institutions, brands, and organisations can fall into a trap of showing a “one-dimensional” version of womanhood. “While I may not identify as a woman, it’s really important that we still have all genders involved in these spaces… We wanted to encompass intersecting ideas,” says Bee. The result is sure to be dazzling, and a testament to the power of art to inform, communicate and inspire positive change.

Hysterical will be on show at no format Gallery in Deptford, London, from 24 March until 03 April 2022. Donate to their fundraiser here.

“If I saw it coming, then someone else must have seen it coming too”

Neville’s relationship with Ukraine began in 2015, when the Ukrainian Military Hospital requested a translated version of his Battle Against Stigma (2015) to give to war veterans. Neville made the project following a trip – commissioned by the Imperial War Museum – to Helmand, Afghanistan, in 2011, to study the stigma of mental health in the British military.

Like many soldiers, Neville returned from the frontline a changed man, with depression and PTSD. He was also disillusioned with the media. “Throughout my time in Helmand I became increasingly aware of this chasm between what is presented in the media and the reality… devastating injuries were barely reported in the UK; it was only if a British soldier lost their life that it would make the TV news,” he writes. In the last decade, Neville recognised the same shortcomings and lack of information regarding the reporting of the political crisis in Ukraine, which was undoubtedly escalating, and felt the need to raise awareness of the responsibility to rectify this. 

Stop Tanks with Books, published by Nazraeli Press, does just this. A collection of portraits of Ukrainian people taken between 2015 and 2021, it opens with a sobering quote by German politician Heiko Maas: “If Russia stops fighting there’ll be no war. If Ukraine stops fighting there’ll be no Ukraine.” It warns of the critical gravity of the situation, and is followed by an illustrated map of the Ukraine-Russia border.

Highlighted in red, the image of the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk reminds us that this crisis is not an isolated incident, but a continuation of escalating tensions in the region, notably Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the ongoing war in Donbas led by the Russian-backed separatist movement. The UNHCR estimates that in 2017 there were already 1.8 million internally displaced refugees in Ukraine, and hundreds of thousands who fled to neighbouring Europe and Russia. 

“In a way it’s too late, but in another way, it’s completely timely.”

The book is an example of Neville’s undertaking to make photography with a purpose. He brings together images, storytelling, research and information in an urgent, resounding call to action: “Allow Ukraine to join NATO. Allow Ukraine to join the EU. There need to be tough sanctions against Russia. Crimea needs to be returned to the Ukrainian government. Troops need to be withdrawn from Russian-occupied Donbas.” 

We see portrayals of Ukrainian traditions and customs and holidaymakers in Odessa, but also how life has changed. Displaced families, a woman sewing camouflage clothing in a basement, crowds queuing at checkpoints to cross the borders between Russian-occupied and Ukrainian-occupied territories – all part of everyday life in eastern Ukraine for nearly a decade.

The tome, edited by David Campany and translated into three languages – English, Ukrainian and Russian – also includes five stories written by Ukrainian poet and writer Lyuba Yakimchuk of her encounters and experiences from the Russian-occupied Donbas in 2014. Though the book has been eight years in the making, Neville was already testifying that this battle began a long time ago. “What I don’t understand,” he says, “and I’m not a political strategist, is that if I saw it coming, then someone else must have seen it coming too.” 

“The international community needs to ask itself a series of urgent questions,” Neville writes in the book’s introduction, with a sense of foreboding. “If Russia’s invasion escalates it will result in a massive exodus of refugees. Ukraine has a population of over 40 million, what will happen if only 10 per cent of these people suddenly flee the country? How will the international community cope with such numbers?… And if Ukraine falls to Russia, which country will be next?”

The importance of providing immediate mental health support for a nation of people who have lived in a state of deep uncertainty is also advocated. “Mental health issues among the population of the Donbas region have risen exponentially due to the incredible stress and pressure of living on the frontline of a war for nearly eight years. This will cause lasting damage,” Neville writes.

Press day

Four days before the invasion, some of the initial print-run’s 750 copies were distributed. “In a way it’s too late, but in another way, it’s completely timely,” says Neville. Just a few weeks before, the books were printed and bound at unprecedented speed in just two weeks in Istanbul by MAS Matbaa printers. They continue to be distributed all over Europe to a list of key policymakers, members of parliament, ambassadors and key media around the world.

The message, then, remains the same: “The aim is for recipients of this book to be prompted into real action, which will result in an end to the war, an end to the killing in eastern Ukraine, and the withdrawal of Russian forces from occupied territories in Donbas and Crimea,” and, indeed, the rest of Ukraine. 

markneville.com

Stop Tanks with Books is published by Nazraeli Press and is available to pre-order now

If you are looking for ways to help and donate to Ukraine, see below for a list of verified resources, among many others.

Choose Love Ukraine Appeal

British Red Cross Ukraine Appeal

The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR)

Save the Children

United Help Ukraine

Nonprofit volunteer organisation currently fundraising to provide emergency medical aid and humanitarian relief to those on the front lines.

ukrainewar.carrd.co

A link for verified fundraisers and useful information that can be shared on social media.