Urban Photo Fest
2010 - 2016
Paul Halliday
Providing advice on strategy, growth and delivery of the Urban Photo Fest, an international festival on urban photography and visual methods, across multiple locations, including Tate Britain and Photography Gallery, in conjunction with Goldsmiths, University of London.
Overview
An international festival exploring lens media practices in relation to the urban domain
Urban Photo Fest is an international photographic festival focusing on urban photography and associated visual research. The international event draws on a wide range of approaches to image-making within contemporary and historical city-based photography and lens-media arts. Its primary aim is to provide critical engagement within and between the fields of visual urbanism, lens-based arts practices, photojournalism, filmmaking, urban sociology, cultural geography, anthropology and art history; in order to encourage dialogue between the visual and theoretical realms.
Strategy
Platform-7 provided strategic advice to the growing Urban Photo Fest, assisting with public engagement programme. Out of UPF a number of photographers formed The Urban Photographers' Association (UPA) in 2018.
The Urban Photographers' Association (UPA)
The Urban Photographers' Association (UPA) aims to show the work of contemporary international photographers focusing on cities and the urban realm. The photographers and artists shown on www.urbanphotographers.org represent a diverse range of practices including landscape, architectural, portraiture, fine art, documentary, street-based and object photography; all informed by an active engagement with urban theory and associated research methods.
Projects
The projects reflect the experiences of personal, often immersive involvement in the urban spaces the image-makers have chosen to work within, and they also raise questions about how photography might speak to debates within urban ethnography and visual arts practice in ways that are culturally, sociologically, historically and aesthetically meaningful for an increasingly wide audience interested in the visual representation, evocation and poetics of everyday city life.
Association
The association has a number of forthcoming events including exhibitions, seminars and workshops, and members are actively involved in publishing and expanding the field of urban photography and visual urbanism through projects, partnerships and collaborations with both local and international institutions.