Interest area: Photography

An exhibition bringing together a series of innovative socially engaged projects reflecting the intimate stories of care, relationships and resilience within our community.

‘Care’ and ‘community’ have become buzzwords in recent years, but the projects included in An Ecology of Care exhibition attempt to highlight the genuine power of collective discussion and action from those with lived experiences in relation to health and social care.

Photographer Tadhg Devlin presents two collaborative projects Bound/Frayed and From Across the Kitchen Table (Who is the Community?).

Bound/Frayed is a project which reflects a year-long project between Tadhg Devlin and a number of staff and people supported by the social care charity, Community Integrated Care.

Together they have been co-authoring images which represent the experience of working in the care sector in some of the most challenging moments, whilst also celebrating the everyday work to support people who access social care, which is often hidden from the public. These powerful portraits capture an important moment of resilience in our society, made during equally challenging times.

Community Integrated Care’s John Hughes, reflects “Tadgh’s work powerfully brings to life the crisis that engulfed the social care sector during the pandemic – creatively reflecting the thoughts, feelings and experiences of this moment of history.

His work also makes visible the incredible passion, skill and impact of people who deliver social care. We hope it helps to reframe an understanding of the pandemic and the importance of the care sector.”

An exhibition of photography from Crosby Camera Club will open to the public at Mencap Cottage House on Mariners Road, Crosby in late August.

The prints, which will be on display around the house, represent a cross-section of recent work created by the camera club’s members, with a variety of subjects depicted.

The exhibition will open on Saturday, August 27th and run for just over a month, closing on Friday, September 30th, 2022.

Members of the public can visit this exhibition of work from local photographers, free of charge, between 9am until 4.30pm while the exhibition runs. Please note, the exhibition is not open on Mondays or Tuesdays.

Newly-elected president of Crosby Camera Club, June Poston, said:

I do hope as many people as possible will visit our photo exhibition and help support both our club and Mencap Liverpool & Sefton.

Mounted prints on display will be on sale at a very reasonable price, with 50% of each sale donated to Mencap Cottage House.

While you’re visiting you can also grab refreshments from the venue’s new coffee shop with delicious cakes, scones, and hot and cold drinks available.”

The exhibition opens just 11 days before the start of a new season for Crosby Camera Club, with new members very welcome to join.

Open Eye Gallery opens up all three galleries from July to September 2022 to a host of work that follows on from the LOOK Climate Lab 2022.

In Gallery 1, there will be the ongoing photography projects On The Ground: The Story of Trans-Nzoia Through the Trees and Tree Story – A History of Liverpool City Region Through Its Trees, two projects which explore the importance of trees and community in both Kitale, Kenya and Liverpool, UK.

On The Ground is the work of a two month residency in the Kitale forest by photographer Frederick Dharshie Wissah, depicting food and water insecurity alongside the local communities aiding in preservation and conservation.

Tree Story is a collaboration between Open Eye Gallery, dot-art, and Mersey Forest, who invited the public to create a history of Liverpool through its trees using personal stories and photography.

The work has been created in collaboration with photographer Andy Yates. Gallery 2 presents Other Lines, stills and moving image work by David Kendall using thermal imaging and SMART phones to visually research air emissions produced by industrial landscapes, such as oil refineries,  in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire.

There is also photographic work sourced through an open call which asked for images responding to themes of energy, materials, transport, or non-human animals. LOOK will showcase Hellen Songa’s Mwalula, a photography project produced while Hellen visited their father Chileshe’s home country of Zambia after 23 years of separation.

Despite the differences in location and culture, both reconnected on their similar interests in farming; in particular, Mwalula Green-Life Farm, a plant-based, organic farm bought and ran by Chileshe and directed with Hellen. Mwulula will be facilitated by Groundworks to show in several public settings –  Faiths4Change, Hope Community Garden, Friends of Everton Park and John Archer Hall.

Open Eye Gallery will also be showing Hellen’s Volunteer Voices: Liverpool Food Growers Network, which exhibited at the LOOK Climate Lab 2022 and exhibited in several public locations.

The portraits are a visual display of 100 volunteers involved in community food growing across Liverpool. Descriptions alongside the portraits highlight the positive benefits individuals get out of volunteering and that these projects have on local nature.

To mark the International Transgender Day of Visibility on March 31st, Open Eye Gallery are celebrating eight of the many faces of trans individuals living in Merseyside.

This day is dedicated to highlighting the accomplishments of transgender and gender non-conforming people, while raising awareness of the work that still needs to be done to achieve trans justice.

WE was produced in the National Trust’s Hardman House, the only known British example of an intact 20th century photographic studio. At its height in the 1930s and 1940s, the possession of a self portrait taken there signified wealth, social credit and a spot in society.

‘Visibility’ is a heavy word, and we must ask ourselves what effective visibility looks like — in photography and culture — but crucially also in legislation and policy. The question posed to the participants included in WE was: ‘what does the International Trans Day of Visibility mean to you?’.

Climate change solutions require both local and global perspectives. This exhibition brings together three photography projects from the African continent offering views on a changing world alongside ways of creating or contributing towards a more sustainable future.

They are a way of showing what the future may hold for us and how we can prepare ourselves for the impacts of climate change. In recognising work being done elsewhere, in seeing what sustainable ideas can be adapted and used, we can see how to actively learn from others and value the role that photography plays in sharing this knowledge.

In Gallery 1, Etinosa Yvonne’s series of diptychs show us everyday routines of sourcing clean water. The male water carriers have set a precedent for taking on this role, a break from the traditional association of women and girls as responsible for fetching water. While it may seem to be a process far removed from our lives here, it shows the flexibility we must have to move through a changing world.

The Slum Studio share the process of creating new garments from global clothes waste in Gallery 2. The influx of discarded, second hand clothes from charities in the West have inundated Accra. Through creativity and reimagining the potential of this material, Slum Studio have reworked, renewed, restored the life cycle of these clothes.

In Gallery 3, Dillon Marsh introduces us to the five zones of vegetation on the Rwenzori Mountains, which translates to “rain maker”. Forty-three glaciers were recorded in this area when it was first surveyed in 1906, now less than half that number remain. The warming climate and the shrinking number of glaciers directs us to think more clearly about the future and what else will be lost.