Photoworks

15/10/2026

here, continuing my digital residency .

Although the photographic component of this work may be over, I continue to return to my archives, forging new bridges and narratives. I feel that the archive is your living document, a testament to the life you have experienced, your memories, your struggles, and your joys.
Over time, I came to see that this growing archive was not just a personal document but a political commentary on American society, alienation, and the capitalist forces that create them. Through this work and the forms it took, from earlier diaristic and grainy images to slower, intentional work in its later chapters, I learned to embrace failure and refusal as visual strategies to challenge the ideas that seek “beauty” purely as an aesthetic experience.

There are a lot of images I am sharing here that may never make it into the final edit of a book I want to publish when the stars align. Images are, to me, like diary entries, but it was important for me to look at them and see them exist beyond the contact sheets, in a darkroom or on a digital screen. Over time, I wanted to be more intentional and direct, to forgo some of the ambiguity in the earlier images, to talk about the concluding chapter of my work, and to reflect on the healing this work created within me.

1: All that glitters
2: Rochester,2019
3:Hands, Harlem, 2022
4: Cobwebs, Bedstuy, 2022
5: Sparkles, Canarsie, 2021
6: Shine, Marylan, USA, 2021
7: The way you look, T in Brooklyn, 2021

14/10/2026

Last week to see "Pseudomorphs" and "Fighting Fish" by Sam Kaufman () and Holly Birtles () at The Regency Town House ().

Please note that this venue now has scaffolding out the front. Audiences are safe to enter but please take care.

13/10/2026

here, continuing my digital residency with Photoworks UK.

Today, I would like to share a few more images of the first chapter of the project. I see this work as a reflection of three significant periods of life during my stay in the US.

As I shared before, the initial part came at a time when I was recovering from the loss of love and ended up in some risky situations in New York, surrounded by wrong choices and in a precarious position physically and mentally as a result. During that short and intense spell between 2019 and 2021/2022, I met two beautiful people, one an immigrant, an asylum seeker from Côte d'Ivoire who was a recovering addict. It almost felt like the universe wanted us to find each other. A came out as trans around the same time we met. We shared a deep bond together. Our shared struggles and proximities became the significant starting point of this journey. I came out as q***r and pansexual around the same time, and she/they became an important character in my life. They no longer stay in New York, and we had to drift apart.

The other man I met was T. He was black and gay and had a complicated relationship with his father. When T was younger, he too had confronted physical violence. Our bond was platonic but intimate, and we had a deep love and respect for each other.
Photography, then, was only a way to hold on to these fleeting experiences.
I later made a limited-edition small book of only 50 copies, with the Japanese publishing house .tokyo, to honor their presence and give some coherence to a difficult phase of life.

13/10/2026

As some of you may have noticed, submissions are open for Earth Photo 2027, our yearly open call in partnership with and , where we invite photographers and filmmakers from around the world to submit work that tells powerful stories about our planet.

The open call is free to enter, and prizes include £1,000 for the Earth Photo Award, the chance to show your work in a national touring exhibition, an artist residency, a feature exhibition at , and many more.

Find more information and submit your work at the link in bio.

Swipe through the works of the 2026 shortlist: 2-3 Matteo Trevisan (), 4-5 Payal Kakkar () , 6-7 Umberto Ferrero

12/10/2026

Responding to the festival’s themes of uncertainty, land, and human experience, Ukraine: Life Un/Broken paints a societal landscape of a country going through and living with war. Photography, as a method of documentation, reflection, and sharing collective experience, unites two Ukrainian photographers in this exhibition. Igor Chekachkov and Dasha Tendita have distinct visual aesthetics, yet their work enters into dialogue about their country’s most challenging time.

This exhibition launch is a fundraiser, all profits donated to local charities in Ukraine .ks .dobra
Private View & Artist Talk – 16 October 2026, 18:00 – 21:00 (Ticketed event)
Exhibition Open – 17-18 October, 11:00 – 16:00 (Free entry)

POST - Second Floor, Industrial House, Hove BN3 3LW

For tickets, visit: https://post-creatives.co.uk/events/

11/10/2026

Community Submission: Barkat Mehra

We invited the Photography+ community to share work on the theme of the Photoworks Festival "Un/stable: Lands, Anxieties, Dreams". This issue features Underwood by Barkat Mehra (), a dialogue between the artist’s Indian-British family and the multifaceted history of a south-east England century-old house and its previous inhabitants.

Explore Barkat Mehra's submission at the link in bio.

11/10/2026

11/10/2026

here, continuing my digital residency.

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, an American writer, defines q***r wisdom as our ability to speak the truth of our desire, that which fundamentally transforms our state of being and the possibilities for life. In a world confined by the limits of language and often by a very rigidly curated idea of identity, desire is imprecise. Identity is an ever-changing structure. Widely contested and debated. My desire remains in looking at q***r beyond the tropes of Western modes of visuality, something that is subliminal, somewhere latent in hyper-visual capitalism. Q***r as a form of resistance, perhaps, even a disavowal. A desire to refuse easy categorization.

For me, this desire manifests itself as the desire for humanity, the desire for justice, which is related to the desire of the other. When someone is confronted with a life-threatening sickness, when someone has seen death very close, the traumas of our individual lives often blind us and stop us from looking beyond. Through mutual collaboration and sharing beyond prejudice, through practicing kindness, through embracing difference, we find a way to live our truths in relation to those around us and a way to the soul of the other.

1: The first time we met, 2022.
2: J at the beach after a decade,2023
3: Rockaways, 2024
4: Bedroom Chronicles, Brooklyn, 2023
5: Summer in Prospect Park, 2024

10/10/2026

Un/Stable Pages - Amin Yousefi

Amin Yousefi, Photoworks' Assistant Curator and Editor of Photography+ reflects on the role of the photograph within the photobook. Starting from the theme of Photoworks Festival 2026, the essay considers how instability is intrinsic to a photograph's meaning, shaped by context-specific factors, and how the photobook allows that instability to emerge.

Read the full essay at the link in bio.

10/10/2026

Antinomies of Remembrance is a moving image and installation piece by Jermaine Francis (), developed with researcher Deborah Ireland from archival material, related to specific events, and periods related to the East African and Indian Ocean slave trades. A small insight of an event of forced migration that spread across to multiple continents. A philosophical speculative meditation on power, space, photography and the complexities archives, shaped by absences, competing temporalities, and political entanglements.

Antinomies of Remebrance is shown at Dorset Place Gallery (1 Dorset Pl, Kemptown, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN2 1ST) as part of Photoworks Festival. The exhibition is open until 1 Nov 2026, Wednesday to Friday from 12:00 to 16:00 and Saturdays from 12:00 to 15.30 or by appointment.