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This
year, Professor Mark Haworth-Booth, Senior Curator of the Victoria
& Albert Museum's Canon Photography Gallery will open the festival.
Featuring
strong, contemporary photography on human, social and cultural issues,
the festival consists of imagery that has had little or no exposure
in the UK.
Leading
the 28 exhibitions will be Simon Norfolk’s compelling Afghanistan
battlefields series, winner of the European Photography Publishers
2002 Award and "A Dialogue with Solitude", an exhibition from the
cult American photographer Dave Heath, whose 60’s work has recently
been republished, but is almost unknown in the UK.
Subjects
covered this year include: extremely powerful images on foot and
mouth's effects on the countryside, from Newport photography lecturer
Clive Landen.
Andy
Moxon's 'Bhopal Now' images which currently are the subject of much
media discussion.
Successfully
living with the aftermath of breast cancer, from German photographer
Katharina Mouratidi.
Winner
of the 2002 Observer Hodge Award, George Makkas exhibits his desolate
images from southern Albania.
Septuagenarian
Gilbert Garcin displays his decidedly Gallic humour with photomontages
of himself in the human condition.
With
an increasing international input, this year's is the largest festival
exposure has ever held.
As
well as community and educational projects, there will be a forum
of talks and seminars on the opening weekend and during the festival,
a showing of the film 'War Photographer', on James Nachtwey’s work.
Robert
Ashby, Festival Director: "With our increased international profile,
we are able to show photography that is of the very highest standard
and relates to strong topical issues.
"I
am very proud of the response we are getting both from the photographic
community and the general public.
"This
year’s expansion continues the development of exposure into a major
event in the UK arts' calendar."
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