The British Journal of Photography

14/02/2025

For this edition, OpenWalls Spotlight is proud to partner with WePresent and Galerie Huit Arles, bringing together a distinguished panel of judges:

▪️Dalia Al-Dujaili - Online Editor and Writer, British Journal of Photography

▪️Holly Fraser - Editor in chief, WePresent

▪️Julia De Bierre - Gallery Director, Galerie Huit Arles

▪️Tosin Adeosun - Curator and Fashion Historian

▪️Daphne Chouliaraki Milner - Culture Director, Atmos

▪️Ken Grant - Photographer, Curator, Writer

With this year's theme, Traditions in Transition, we asked them what they hope to see in this year’s entrants - here’s what they shared:

⭐ “I'm looking for their sense of storytelling; how they use imagery to tell a story, grab my attention and make me feel something or want to know more. I find this more arresting than perfect technique or composition.“ - Holly Fraser, Editor-in-chief at WePresent.

⭐ “I’m excited to see entries that embrace nuance and explore the liminality of how traditions adapt and evolve—whether in the intimacy of everyday moments or through broader reflections on the key social causes and movements that define our times.” - Daphne Chouliaraki Milner, Culture Director at Atmos.

⭐ “I'm particularly interested in works that offer new perspectives and encourage new ways of seeing and feeling through the visual medium.” - Tosin Adeosun, Curator and Fashion Historian

Digital and Full Access Members can submit up to 10 single images or one series to OpenWalls Spotlight for free. Explore our Membership options and enter now: https://1854.photo/4hKOKCY

12/02/2025

The ICP in New York revisits Weegee in an epoch where image and illusion is king. Though Weegee was shooting decades before the invention of mobile phones and social media, he managed to foresee the centrality of images – particularly the shocking kind – in today’s zeitgeist.

There couldn’t be a more urgent time to interrogate the idea of spectacle, which has become an overwhelming force in our daily life. Today’s shortened attention spans, addictive reels, and the quick and easy dissemination of violent images, coupled with the ease of AI to change any image into a grotesque caricature of reality, calls Weegee’s work into an altogether new light.

BJP speaks to show curator and director of the Henri Cartier Bresson Foundation, Clément Chéroux, who became fascinated with the potential link between Guy Debord’s seminal text, from which the exhibition takes its title, and Weegee’s work. “Weegee wanted to say something about America, he wanted to point out the fact that, in America, everything is transformed into a spectacle. Even death,” says Chéroux.

Weegee: Society of the Spectacle is on now at the ICP, New York. Read the full story at the link below.

Years before social media, the photographer was already critical of our obsession with celebrity culture and mocked the idea of spectacle

12/02/2025

Flames licking at metal, smoke billowing into the sky. Ada Zielińska sets cars ablaze to photograph them in the moment before destruction turns an object to memory. Her images revel in controlled chaos, a fascination with catastrophe that’s both intimate and relentless.

Our back cover of the latest BJP issue is a reminder that destruction is often the catalyst for rebirth. It’s fitting, then, that Zielińska’s work appears in European Kinship: Eastern European Perspective, the exhibition now on at Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest, in collaboration with Adam Mickiewicz Institute. Curated by Emese Mucsi and Wiktoria Michałkiewicz, the show explores the histories that bind Eastern Europe – shared borders, ideological shifts, and a visual language shaped by resistance.

Artists interrogate the weight of history, but also the weight of expectation, what it means to be seen as Eastern European in a wider cultural landscape that often overlooks or flattens its complexity. Zielińska’s torched cars sit within a chapter titled Grotesque, alongside Szabolcs Barakonyi, whose work exposes the gulf between official narratives and lived reality. Elsewhere, image-makers confront identity, spirituality, and nostalgia.

The act of looking – who controls it, and what power it holds – is also central to our front cover, photographed by Thaddé Comar. His work dissects the theatre of politics and the machinery of the media, where power isn’t just exercised but staged. His images distort and reconstruct scenes of political spectacle, revealing a world where visibility is both an asset and a weapon. Where Zielińska’s fire consumes, Comar’s lens exposes – the media’s grip, the act of watching, the very structures that dictate what we see.

At a time when national borders are closing, and the politics of exclusion are on the rise, European Kinship asks what it means to belong.

The exhibition runs until 30 March 2025 at Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center, Budapest, and is co-organised by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of the international cultural program of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union 2025.

Subscribe by 20 February to secure this issue as part of your package: https://1854.photo/40S3J7q

Front cover © Thaddé Comar
Back cover from the series Pyromaniac’s Manual © Ada Zielińska.

10/02/2025

Where is a tree from? And does knowing its origin really mean understanding it? In How to Unname a Tree, Zheng Andong challenges the impulse to categorise, exploring the colonial and geopolitical weight of botanical naming. His haunting black-and-white images of pine trees – printed on delicate East Asian paper, treated with seawater, and layered to create an ethereal effect – speak to the fluidity of migration, both human and natural.

Exhibited at this year’s Jimei x Arles festival, Andong’s work traces the histories of trees across China, Taiwan, and Japan, revealing how their movements long predate the rigid borders we impose today. He asks: What happens when we unname something? Can we see it more clearly, or do we lose something essential?

By resisting classification, Andong invites us to rethink not just trees, but identity itself. In a world that constantly seeks to define, label, and separate, How to Unname a Tree is an invitation to look beyond borders – geographical, political, and personal. Read more at the link below.

How to Unname a Tree dismantles the notion of trees as static symbols, revealing them as beings that blur the lines of identity

07/02/2025

Adama Jalloh has become a trusted portrait photographer, shooting FKA Twigs, Little Simz and more. Based in London, the city where she grew up, she is now contemplating her next move.

Jalloh’s early subjects were all family and friends. She recalls her initial shyness, and the way she began to “warm up” by photographing those close to her. Increasingly, the city became central to her work and in her third year, she began explicitly to make projects “connected to the area that I lived in, or where I’m from heritage-wise” – Jalloh’s family background is Sierra Leonean – “leaning into that, and seeing where things would go,” she tells BJP.

Alice Zoo photographs and speaks to Jalloh at home and in the park. For now, her focus is turning back towards personal projects. “I’m hungry to start making work again, and figuring out what I want to do, how I want to do it, where I want to go,” she says.

Read the full interview at the link below.

Nearly a decade after winning BJP’s Breakthrough Single Image award, Adama Jalloh has become a trusted portrait photographer

06/02/2025

Photographer Rosa Franjic arrived in Socotra not necessarily as a tourist, but as a guest – led by friendship, curiosity, and a desire to document a place where tradition and modernity collide. Her lens captured the quiet resilience of those who preserve the island’s fragile biodiversity, from the De Myuri brothers, guardians of the Dragon’s Blood tree forests, to Mona, who tends an organic garden in defiance of disappearing agricultural customs.

But photography has its limits. Franjic speaks of the stories she couldn't tell – those of the Socotri women whose lives remain largely undocumented. In their absence, she found something unexpected: an intimacy beyond the camera, an understanding built through conversation rather than composition. She also found a critique of the Western lens more generally and began interrogating her own practice.

Now, as she turns her focus to Bosnia, the country she left decades ago, Franjic continues her search for stories of endurance – of people shaped by land, memory, and resistance to erasure.

Read the full conversation and discover more of Franji’s work at the link below.

Bosnian-British Rosa Franjic and her partner travelled to the Yemeni island to meet friends working on preserving its staggering biodiversity

06/02/2025

The idea of resistance is not always a straightforward one but, where there’s a bastion of power, there’s often a need for resistance. In Sakir Khader’s case, this might be resisting whichever organisation put him on a United States terror watch list for his work in Palestine. Or it could be the Belgian governmental departments able to permit or deny Hélène Amouzou’s applications for asylum and residency.

On one hand, images provide a means to challenge dominant narratives – Khader documents the immense suffering of Palestinians, Amouzou sheds light on marginalised voices, and Wolfgang Tillmans captures deeply personal experiences, including love, in all its complexity.

On the other hand, as Linder and Thaddé Comar demonstrate, photography can just as easily reinforce harmful stereotypes, further empower those already in control, and serve as a tool of surveillance and suppression. Tillmans’ work increasingly questions what images reveal and how they circulate; the dream of unrestricted information, a hallmark of 1960s optimism, may also, like many other dreams of that era, carry the seeds of its own undoing.

Become a Member by 20 February to secure this issue as part of your package: https://1854.photo/42JgMu8

05/02/2025

Siân James is a women's rights campaigner and former MP from Wales, renowned for her pivotal role in the Dulais Valley group during the 1984 Miners' Strike. Alongside others, she helped support striking miners and their families, feeding over 1,000 families a week across nine centres. Women like Siân were integral in organizing food collections, soup kitchens, distributing food parcels, and raising funds. Their work, alongside the solidarity of Le****ns and G**s Support the Miners (LGSM), became a symbol of resilience, later immortalized in the 2014 film Pride.

This powerful portrait of Siân, captured by Andy Martin, is one of the 100 winning images of Portrait of Britain Vol. 7. Taken at the Women Against Pit Closures 40th anniversary celebration in Durham, 2024, it’s part of an ongoing collaboration with No More Nowt, highlighting the critical roles women played during the 1984 Miners' Strike and its lasting impact. This image, along with the other winning works, was displayed for a month on JCDecaux UK's digital screens. The winning images were selected from a shortlist of 200, all of which are featured in the Portrait of Britain Vol. 7 photobook, published by Bluecoat Press and sponsored by JCDecaux UK.

The Portrait of Britain Vol. 7 exhibition has now closed. Thank you to all the photographers, judges, Bluecoat Press and JCDecaux UK for their invaluable contributions.

Subscribe to our newsletter to stay informed about the next edition of Portrait of Britain and when submissions open: https://1854.photo/4gJB5vb

📷: Andy Martin (), Portrait of Britain Vol. 7 winner.

04/02/2025

SUBMISSIONS NOW OPEN

This is OpenWalls Spotlight 2025, an international photography award dedicated to showcasing exceptional talent. In partnership with , this year’s theme, Traditions in Transition, invites photographers to explore the evolving relationship between heritage and modernity, capturing how cultural practices are being reshaped in today’s world.

Now in its fifth edition, OpenWalls returns to the renowned Galerie Huit Arles (), a 17th-century art space, during Les Rencontres d’Arles (), the world’s leading photography festival. One body of work and three single images will be selected and exhibited at Salon Matador in July 2025.

This year’s judges:

▪️Julia de Bierre, Gallery Director at Galerie Huit Arles

▪️Holly Fraser, Editor in chief at WePresent

▪️Dalia Al-Dujaili, Online Editor at British Journal of Photography

▪️Ken Grant, Renowned documentary photographer

▪️Daphne Chouliaraki Milner, Culture Director at Atmos

▪️Tosin Adeosun, curator and fashion historian

Don’t miss the chance to have your work showcased on an international stage. Become a Member and submit your entry today: https://1854.photo/3PZTJ70

Entries close on 14 March 2025, 23:59 UK time.

03/02/2025

What if dreams could reunite us with the places and people we’ve lost?

Through archive imagery, extreme close-ups, and deeply personal collaborations, Amak Mahmoodian’s One Hundred and Twenty Minutes explores the invisible bonds of exile. The project’s title refers to the time we spend dreaming each night – an untouchable space where distance dissolves, and home becomes reachable once again.

For Mahmoodian, exile is more than physical separation; it is a political and emotional rupture, a forced displacement that lingers in memory. But in dreams, she reconnects with her family, re-experiencing the small details of their presence. This sentiment extends to the 16 participants whose dreams – expressed through photographs, sketches, and poetry – are woven into a collective act of remembrance and resistance.

These portraits are not conventional. Faces are obscured, identities shielded, yet they reveal so much. A mother cradles absent children. A curtain separates, yet unites. A fleeting roadside view evokes escape. These dreamlike images hold stories of longing, resilience, and the search for belonging in a world that imposes borders.

Mahmoodian’s work reminds us: Portraits don’t just show faces – they reveal the unseen, the untold, the in-between. She offers a powerful response to displacement, challenging us to reconsider how we see those forced to leave home.

Read the full conversation with Mahmoodian at the link below.

Using archive imagery, collaboration, extreme close-ups and staged photographs, the Iranian photographer delves into portraiture and culture

31/01/2025

The Photography Show 2025 by AIPAD lands at the Park Avenue Armory this April, bringing together a curated mix of boundary-pushing photography and historic masterpieces.

This year’s fair signals a bold evolution: the debut of the Discovery sector highlights emerging voices and fresh perspectives through tightly focused solo and thematic presentations. Meanwhile, long-standing exhibitors – including global names such as Galerie Alta from Andorra and local legends such as Bruce Silverstein – offer a compelling counterpoint with iconic works that define the medium’s legacy.

Four days of AIPAD Talks promise thought-provoking discussions, while publishers take a leading role in the fair’s newly reimagined layout, blending books and prints seamlessly under one roof.

Save the date: 23 to 27 April – find out more about this year’s exhibitors at the link below.

BJP catches up with Director Lydia Melamed Johnson to learn more about the fair, this year unveiling the new Discovery sector

30/01/2025

✨OPENING SOON: OpenWalls Spotlight ✨

We’re thrilled to announce the upcoming launch of OpenWalls Spotlight, in partnership with WePresent and Galerie Huit Arles. This international photography award offers emerging and established photographers the chance to showcase their work in renowned locations.

The theme for this edition is "Traditions in Transition", inviting photographers to explore how modernity influences cultural customs and practices. The award seeks powerful visual narratives that capture the balance between preserving traditional customs and adapting to contemporary changes. Whether through evolving attire, the integration of technology with ancient rituals, or the transformation of communal spaces, we are looking for compelling stories that reflect the dynamic nature of cultural identity in today’s world.

One series winner and three single image winners will have the opportunity to exhibit their work at Galerie Huit Arles, in conjunction with Les Rencontres d’Arles, opening at the beginning of July.

Submissions will open on 04 February so get your work ready and become a Member to enter the award. Learn more: https://1854.photo/4hB0B6r

© Flora Vever, OpenWalls 2023 single image winner

29/01/2025

Horses, freedom, and the cosmos. At just 23, photographer Domenico Matera invites us into his poetic world, where the connection between humans, animals, and the universe becomes clear. For Matera, photography is a vehicle to observe and honour the essential truths of nature. His latest project, A New Friend, is an exploration of his lifelong fascination with horses, creatures he describes as "pure energy" and "teachers of the infinite."

Set against the hills of Basilicata, Italy, Matera captures the raw beauty of the animals, from their wild, untamed spirit to the intimate bonds they form with humans. Through his lens, a horse’s eye becomes a window to the cosmos – a reminder of our shared place in the universe.

This project represents a new phase in Matera’s work: one that dives deeper into sensorial photography, blending art, philosophy, and humility. “If we could see ourselves through the eyes of a horse,” he reflects, “we’d find joy in simply existing.”

Read the full story at the link below.

The photographer discusses his deep connection with horses, the universal truths they embody, and how they inspire his sensorial photography

29/01/2025

COMING SOON | RESIST! Issue 7921

Recent history has been defined by resistance to power in many forms, from major protests sweeping our cities to a newfound suspicion of the media, and the information circulated in it. Our latest issue honours the act of resistance and considers how photography can help – and how it can be part of the problem.

Wolfgang Tillmans discusses his upcoming exhibition at the Pompidou; groundbreaking artist Linder speaks about her new show at the Hayward Gallery. And Sakir Khader makes powerful yet undeniably controversial images of Palestinian resistance fighters.

Thaddé Comar graces this issue’s cover, with a feature on questioning the power of images and resisting surveillance. Elsewhere, Hélène Amouzou presents a series of self-portraits that refuse both erasure and the documentation of bureaucracy. And we catch up with the curators of an exhibition about iconic style magazine The Face at the National Portrait Gallery.

This issue features a special and major section on Polish and Hungarian image-making, in collaboration with the Robert Capa Contemporary Photography Center in Budapest and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute in Warsaw, marking their co-curated exhibition, European Kinship – Eastern European Perspective at the Capa Center until 30 March.

All this and much more, including new books and exciting projects, in the Resist issue of British Journal of Photography.

Subscribe by 20 February to secure this issue as part of your package: https://1854.photo/3WybVIs

© Sakir Khader

27/01/2025

Santiago Escobar-Jaramillo created The Fish Dies by its Mouth in collaboration with communities in two coastal villages – Rincón del Mar and Bahía Solano, in Colombia. Rincón del Mar looks out to the Caribbean and Bahía Solano towards the Pacific; each has its own distinct culture and traditions, but both are also on the frontline of the Colombian drug trade.

“We are used to talking about these topics in a very masculine way, with weapons, violence, blood, a stereotyped way of thinking about Pablo Escobar and the narcos. But what happens when you try to move it from that perspective and put the attention on the communities,” asks the photographer? “On their resilience and resistance, on their daily lives, their celebrations, music, dance, gastronomy, architecture, even whale sightings?”

Escobar-Jaramillo photographed locals with their faces concealed, scarves protecting their identities. These locals have found packages of drugs, lost or perhaps jettisoned at
sea; by selling them, they can earn a year’s wages, but risk incurring the wrath of the paramilitaries.

Find out more about the project at the link below.

The photographer worked in collaboration with coastal communities in Colombia to advocate against the devastating effects of narcotics

24/01/2025

In the late ’60s and early ’70s, Nick Hedges walked into the neglected slums of Britain’s cities, camera in hand, and saw what many chose to ignore. Families trapped in damp, overcrowded homes. Fathers weighed down by guilt. Mothers like Greta, raising their children with strength and love despite squalor. The elderly, isolated after the destruction of close-knit neighborhoods.

Hedges’ images, shot on grainy monochrome film, carry the weight of their lives. A modest flat in Newcastle, decorated with a school photo of a lost daughter and a faded Jesuit poster, speaks volumes about survival. A child plays on a broken street, surrounded by walls that hold stories of hope and despair.

These photographs were a rallying cry. Working with Shelter, Hedges gave the public an unfiltered look at the human cost of systemic neglect. “I still believe we can change the world,” Hedges reflects.

Find out more at the link below. And get this title for £18 until the end of January as part of Bluecoat’s Book of the Month. Visit their website for more details.

With his chronicle of the communities struck by government incompetence, the photographer tells BJP that "it’s important to look at history”

22/01/2025

In 2022, Daniel Mebarek started his project Fotos Gratis, setting up a mobile studio to take portraits in the Feria 16 de Julio, El Alto, Bolivia, one of the largest street markets in South America. Mebarek’s work is shaped by the gaze of both the photographer and the subject, and invites us to reflect on our self-perception in the act of being observed.

In conversation with artist, researcher and publisher Sergio Valenzuela-Escobedo, he tells BJP about collaboration, performance and the societal role of the itinerant photographer, likening his practice to that of performance artists.

Throughout their conversation, they discuss Andean culture, the spiritual role of the mountain, decolonial aesthetics, and Mebarek reminisces on encounters the studio brought him, “such as when a mechanic, holding a political science book, invited me to his repair shop to discuss politics,” he says. “Or when a drunken participant thanked me for his photograph by later bringing me small pears. One particularly memorable moment was witnessing a man kiss his photograph and hold it to his chest as he walked away.”

Read more about the project at the link below.

Setting up a mobile studio in a Bolivian market, the photographer offered locals free portraits – Sergio Valenzuela-Escobedo speaks with him about collaboration, performance and the societal role of the itinerant photographer