The British Journal of Photography

03/11/2025

Zaineb Abelque was born in south London to a Moroccan family – in her work, she explores faith, tradition and visual heritage in the diaspora. She also works extensively in her homeland, often capturing daily rituals on her 35mm camera. Abelque’s latest project began by spending time in Marrakech’s barbershops, immersed in the culture.

In a country where youth employment is scarce and public recreational spaces are limited, the barbershop emerges as a vital hub. On the streets of Marrakech, Abelque set up a makeshift studio and conversed with the ‘masharmen’ – slang for the boys and men in this stylish subculture – about how they express their individual style.

As Abelque continued her research, the project deepened in complexity. Hairstyles, she realised, reflect political realities. “There’s this stereotype that these boys are just idling all day,” she says. “But they’re creating joy and purpose for themselves. A footballer debuts a new style and suddenly everyone’s talking about it, running to the barber to get the same look.”

Read the full story, from our latest Maps issue, at the link below.

The South London-based Moroccan photographer spent time in Marrakech's barbershops, photographing its young men

03/11/2025

🚨Final week to enter Female in Focus x Nikon 2025 🚨

Created to challenge the gender imbalance in the photography industry, Female in Focus provides a global platform for women and non-binary photographers to gain visibility, recognition and support.

This year’s theme, On the Cusp, asks: what does transformation look like? Whether personal or political, quiet or revolutionary, we’re seeking work that captures the tension and possibility of change.

Selected photographers will:

▪️ Be exhibited at PhotoIreland in Dublin and 10.14 Gallery in London
▪️ Be reviewed by a world-class jury of editors, curators and artists
▪️ Receive international press exposure
▪️ Series winners will receive a Nikon Z Series mirrorless camera and two NIKKOR Z lenses

Become a Full Access Member today to enter up to 10 single images or one complete series. Membership also includes complimentary entry to all BJP awards and a subscription to our quarterly print magazine, delivered straight to your door.

Enter now: http://1854.photo/3J2aoHg

31/10/2025

Twin brothers Jalan and Jibril Durimel have spent their lives in motion – Paris, Miami, Saint Martin, Los Angeles, now New York. They started online, making YouTube videos, teaching themselves editing, storytelling and the language of images through imitation before finding their own voice.

Today, the Durimels’ work merges fashion, portraiture, and cinematic composition, shaped as much by diasporic experience as by intuition. Their long-term project, Quiet as the Country, reimagines a homeland grounded in Black beauty and belonging – a fictitious tropical republic where portraiture, landscape, and costume intersect to tell stories of warmth, light, and identity.

Movement, in every sense, defines their practice. Lundambuyu’s Mobility Program, their most recent series, celebrates the able body and the dignity of everyday life. Printed in a limited run of 500 posters and shared at Climax Books in New York, it marks the first public reception of work that is at once playful, intimate, and disciplined.

The brothers work with minimal styling, natural light, small crews, and a search for images that feel effortless. Collaboration is measured, careful, a balance between autonomy and shared vision. They seek what feels organic, whether photographing the Caribbean sun, the African diaspora in Paris, or stones formed without human intervention.

Read their conversation with BJP here: http://1854.photo/4ojUnM8

© Jalan and Jibril Durimel

30/10/2025

In Body Talk, the latest issue of British Journal of Photography, we explore how images of the body – particularly those that depict love, desire, and obsession – challenge what Martin Jay called the “disinterested gaze”.

The answers, like love itself, are never simple. Diego Moreno’s deeply personal portraits merge sacred imagery with erotic encounters, seeking reconciliation between body and soul while archivist Stefan Dickers reconsiders po*******hy and kink as social history. Hoda Afshar traces fixation through a colonial archive; Andi Galdí Vinkó exposes what science omits from its depiction of the body; and Mark Sealy envisions a liberatory photographic future that resists the violence of observation. But artists Alba Zari and Amandine Kuhlmann reflect on the objectification embedded even in self-representation.

Body Talk also features our regular Agenda, Projects, and Intelligence sections. Highlights include the first Italian exhibition dedicated to the HIV-AIDS crisis (1982–96), Alejandro Cartagena’s major retrospective at SFMoMA, and the V&A Photography Centre’s first complete rehang. Plus, insights from Joumana El Zein Khoury, Executive Director of World Press Photo, and a spotlight on Takuma Nakahira’s radical photo theory.

Subscribe by 19 November to receive Body Talk and all upcoming issues of British Journal of Photography delivered directly to your door: http://1854.photo/4qxnLzW

📷️: Rotimi Fani-Kayode

29/10/2025

I Still Dream of Lost Vocabularies brings together twelve artists whose practices expand the photographic image into a space of memory, imagination, and resistance. Curated by Bindi Vora, the exhibition unfolds at Autograph, London, through 21 March 2026.⁠

The project began with a question: what happens when the archives fail us? For British Mauritian artist Sabrina Tirvengadum, whose family history as indentured labourers in 19th-century Mauritius exists largely without photographs, the answer lies in reimagining the past. Using AI models, she creates dreamlike portraits that blur memory and invention. “Something’s always not quite right,” she says, “and histories are distorted that way as well.”⁠

Across the exhibition, this impulse to repair and reinterpret runs deep. Wendimagegn Belete’s Unveil (2016) layers hundreds of faces from Ethiopia’s anti-colonial resistance into a single, composite portrait. Thato Toeba’s Man on Fire (2017) revisits a moment of xenophobic violence in South Africa through collage and repetition. Arpita Akhanda’s woven works, made from maps and family portraits, meditate on displacement and belonging after Partition.⁠

For Vora, collage is an act of abundance. “We mistake photographs for truth,” she notes. “These artists challenge that authority.”⁠

Read the full story at the link below:

I Still Dream of Lost Vocabularies invites new perspectives on social histories through mixed-media image making

28/10/2025

‼️ DEADLINE EXTENDED | Enter Female in Focus x Nikon 2025 ‼️

We’ve extended the deadline to give more photographers the opportunity to take part - due to the major Amazon Web Services outage that occurred last week, which disrupted access to submissions in the final days.

This is your chance to gain international recognition and exhibit your work on a global stage.

▪️ Theme: On the Cusp, imagery exploring moments of change, transition and possibility

▪️ Exhibition: PhotoIreland (Dublin) and 10.14 Gallery (London)

▪️ Prizes: Nikon Z Series mirrorless camera + 2 NIKKOR Z lenses for each series winner

To submit a broader selection of work, become a Digital or Full Access Member and enter up to 10 single images or one complete series.

📅 New deadline: 11 November 2025

Enter now: http://1854.photo/42OUxT6

27/10/2025

Andrew Miksys’s Baxt returns nearly two decades after its first release. The project began in 1998, when the American photographer travelled to Lithuania on a Fulbright Fellowship, seeking to understand the country his father had fled as a child. There, he began a lifelong collaboration with Lithuania’s Roma community.⁠
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Taking its title from the Romani word for “luck” or “fate,” Baxt began with chance encounters in the Roma settlement of Taboras, on the outskirts of Vilnius. Over the years, Miksys documented the neighbourhood’s homes, gestures, and rituals as they slowly disappeared – demolished or burned until the last house fell in 2020.
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From photographs to sculptural installations, Miksys’s practice has evolved into an act of preservation. Using salvaged fragments – doors, beams, children’s toys – he builds physical records of a world under erasure. Exhibited at MO Museum and beyond, these works bridge image and object, testimony and memorial.⁠
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The new edition of BAXT, designed by Claudia Küssel, introduces unseen photographs, essays, and voices from the Roma community. Distributed through Antenne Books, it will be accompanied by events in Lithuania and at The Photographers’ Gallery, London.
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The London launch of BAXT will include a talk chaired by BJP Online Editor Dalia Al-Dujaili on 6 November, as well as singing and copies of the book DISKO at The Photographers’ Gallery.

Read the full story at the link below.

24/10/2025

When every street is occupied ground, movement itself becomes resistance.

In Landing, Maen Hammad turns his lens on Palestinian skateboarders finding escape and expression through motion: a quiet act of defiance and survival.

📅 Date: Friday, 1 November
🕓 Time: 4:00 PM
📍 Location: Oxford House, Bethnal Green, London

Join Maen Hammad, Dalia Al-Dujaili and Mohamed Somji for a conversation and book launch presented by British Journal of Photography and Gulf Photo Plus.

Limited copies of Landing will be available on the night, published by Huwawa Books, a new artist-led publisher amplifying counternarratives from the Arab world.

Get your ticket: http://1854.photo/3JojSfZ

23/10/2025

“Within truth comes the idea of trust. What can we trust? What can we believe?” asks Katy Barron, director of Photo Oxford. Opening on 25 October, the biennial festival aims to explore the idea of Truth via a rich programme of exhibitions and talks, plus a one-day symposium at the Bodleian Library.

Geoffrey Batchen, professor of the history of art at Trinity College, is curating Surface Tension, a group exhibition at Kendrew Barn Gallery, St John’s College, mostly drawn from his personal collection. Beginning with early daguerreotypes and moving through to contemporary works, it explores the materiality of the photographic surface, the idea of where the image is held. Jillian Edelstein’s Truth & Lies at North Wall Gallery uses words and images to explore the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings at the end of the apartheid regime in South Africa.

At the Old Fire Station exhibitions by Heather Agyepong, Lydia Goldblatt and Jenny Lewis will speak of the subjective truth of lived, interior experiences, while Haley Morris-Cafiero and Michael Christopher Brown, both on show at Maison Francaise d’Oxford, are exploring AI. Accompanying the exhibitions programme are panels, artist conversations, portfolio reviews, film screenings and events, including a symposium featuring a paper from BJP editor Diane Smyth.

“I see it as an opportunity to really explore the question of truth, to have meaningful conversations, and to learn something along the way,” says Barron. “We want this to be a grown-up festival that embraces complexity.”

Read the full story:

Founded in 2013 and with new director Katy Barron in charge, biennial international photography festival Photo Oxford returns with a theme that aims for both inclusivity and depth

21/10/2025

Final two weeks to submit your work to Female in Focus x Nikon 2025!

This year’s theme, On the Cusp, invites photographers to reflect on moments of change, both personal or global. From ageing, migration and motherhood to political shifts, climate crisis and technological transformation, we’re looking for images that capture what it means to stand at a threshold.

Selected work will be exhibited at PhotoIreland in Dublin and 10.14 Gallery in London, with series winners receiving a Nikon Z Series mirrorless camera and two NIKKOR Z lenses of their choice.

To enter a wider selection of work, become a Digital Access or Full Access Member allowing you to submit up to 10 single images or one complete series, with no additional fees.

🗓️ Entries close 6 November 2025

Submit your work now: http://1854.photo/4naaxWT

20/10/2025

Nan Goldin’s This Will Not End Well transforms Milan’s Pirelli HangarBicocca into an intimate, cinematic village. Curated by Roberta Tenconi and Lucia Aspesi, the monumental exhibition marks Goldin’s first major presentation as a filmmaker – an immersive constellation of rooms designed by Hala Wardé, each responding to the slideshows it contains.

We begin with The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (1981 – 2022), Goldin’s raw, lifelong portrait of intimacy, violence, and identity, before moving through a series of haunting works: The Other Side, Sisters, Saints and Sibyls, Memory Lost, Fire Leap, Sirens, and two new additions: You Never Did Anything Wrong (2024) and Stendhal Syndrome (2024). Together, they form a three-hour odyssey through the artist’s repertoire.

A sound prelude by Soundwalk Collective, titled Bleeding (2025), sets the tone – an ambient collaboration that draws us deep into Goldin’s psyche. From Provincetown in the ’70s to today, her use of slides remains both her method and her message: storytelling as resistance.

At the opening, Goldin reminded us of art’s responsibility to bear witness, premiering Gaza, a short film compiled from journalists’ and civilians’ footage. “I could talk about elegant things,” she said, “but really, this is where my mind has been for the past two years.” It is an unsurprising addition to her body of work, given her previous social activism, from the AIDs epidemic to the American opioid crisis.

Read the full story:

14/10/2025

When she relocated 5,469 miles from the U.S. to England, her accent immediately betrayed her origin and at that moment, Francesca Hummler’s identity became a question. From that disorientation Apparently in America (A.I.A.) was born: a photographic platform born in a pub conversation, named after the unfinished exclamations heard around her, meant to unsettle as much as to invite reflection. Each participating artist is asked to finish the prompt “Apparently, in America…” and through these responses, A.I.A. assembles a mosaic of dissent, longing, resistance, and belonging.

In this feature, Hummler dissects the work of several photographers – André Duane Ramos-Woodard, Diana Guerra, Maggie Shannon, and Aldo Cervantes – to deliver reflections that pierce the mythos of freedom, surveillance, care, and the politics of bodies. Their images interrogate: who gets to be “American enough”? who is excluded? Photography becomes more than image; it is a tool of preservation, critique, and reclamation.

Read the full story at the link below.

Exploring identity, responsibility, and resistance, Apparently in America uses photography to interrogate what it means to be “American” today