Brighton Photography Biennial

Source: So Like You, © Erica Scourti Ro, Backbend, A Photoworks, Photographers’ Gallery and #temporarycusto

So Like You, © Erica Scourti Ro, Backbend, A Photoworks, Photographers’ Gallery and #temporarycustodians co-commission for Brighton Photo Biennial 2014, developed on a residency hosted by Islington Mill, Salford

This is the event’s sixth outing, and will feature work by more than 45 photographers, artists, collectives and partners.

According to the festival organisers, all the work on show is united by a common approach that has seen it produced “through innovative, new and unexpected partnerships between individuals, practitioners and organisations from different fields, together with previously unseen perspectives on photography.”

Numerous events will be taking place throughout Brighton and Hove, as well as other coastal spaces.

Some projects even venture into the sea, such as Simon Faithfull’s collaborative commission Reef. This involved a boat being towed out to sea from Portland. Viking burial style, it will then be set alight and sunk, with all this pyromania filmed by five on-board cameras that will transmit footage back to the shore in real-time.

From hot fire to some hot scoops, paparazzi photography will also be explored at the festival in a show curated by The Archive of Modern Conflict, Amore e Piombo: The Photography of Extremes in 1970s Italy.

The 1970s is also the focus of a show celebrating British documentary photography. Real Britain 1974: Co-Optic and Documentary Photography celebrates the 40th anniversary of the launch of the Co-Optic group’s Real Britain postcard project, which aimed to show 1970s Britain as it really was. The Co-Optic Group included the likes of Martin Parr, Daniel Meadows, Nick Hedges, Fay Godwin and Gerry Badger.

Over at the Hove Museum, Jan vonn Holleben will be leading a session that will try to discover the stories behind previously unidentified slides and negatives in The Amazing Analogue – How We Play Photography.

Meanwhile the Towner will also be looking at photography’s early stages, with an exhibition of early cinema apparatus and ephemera such as early cine cameras (c.1900) and magic lanterns slides (c.1850). these will be shown alongside moving image works by contemporary artists like Douglas Gordon, Saskia Olde Wolbers and Jane & Louise Wilson; looking to examine “the transition between still and moving image across photography, magic lantern slides and cinema.”

Brighton Photo Biennial runs from 4 October – 2 November at various venues across Brighton. For more information visit bpb.org.uk