Photo|Frome Symposium

New for 2023, this two-day symposium will reflect the festival’s theme, ‘Decolonising Environments’. This explores the complex and often conflicting relationships between human communities, places, and the natural world. The symposium will feature keynote talks from national and international photographers, panel discussions and audience conversations.

The symposium is curated by Jennie Ricketts. Following 17 years as a picture researcher and Picture Editor for The Observer Magazine, Jennie established her own Gallery in 2006. She now also serves on the Board of Trustees for Autograph and the Martin Parr Foundation.

Speakers at the symposium include Gideon Mendel, exhibited in MPB @ Rook Lane, and Arteh Odjidja, showing at The Whittox Gallery.

Other contributors include Giles Duley, founder of Legacy of War Foundation, photographer, writer, chef and presenter, whose work focuses on the long-term humanitarian impacts of conflict.

Mohini Chandra’s work deals with articulations of identity and globalised spaces, and the role of the photographer in relation to memory and migration.

Jenny Matthews has been photographing conflict and social issues for British newspapers, magazines and development organisations since 1982. She will be talking about her embroidered image series and photo quilts.

Marc Wilson works on long term documentary projects, including ‘A Wounded Landscape – bearing witness to the Holocaust’ and ‘The Last Stand’.

Joanne Coates lives and works across the North East of England, where she explores rurality, hidden histories, and inequalities relating to low income through photography, installations, and audio. She uses photography to question stories around power, identity, wealth, and poverty.

Panel discussions will include Dominique Nok, curator of the UK Black Female Photographers exhibition at The Whittox Gallery, Gobinder Jhitta and Keerthana Kunnath, both showing in MPB @ Rook Lane.