Format Photography Festival March 2013.

BA (Hons) Contemporary Photography and Foundation Degree Commercial Photography students attended the Format Festival in Derby last Thursday. 

The festival occurs across a wide variety sites and institutions, from gallery and museums, to factory spaces and disused shops. The work on show covers an equally diverse range, and the experience of seeing so much work over the day means that there is always something for all. 

Petra Stridfeldt Images

We had the added value of Petra Stridfeldt, one of our alumni (2011) being part of the festival, which provided an excellent opportunity to see that with sustained effort it is possible for our students to position themselves and their work on such a prominent platform.

Other Highlights would include Eric Kessels show ‘Album beauty’ which celebrates the photo album, the work re-appropriates the images from a wide range of photo albums from all over the world. What was evident in walking around the work, looking at it and listening to the comments of other viewers, was the nostalgic familiarity to those who knew about, and had had experience of this form of photographic culture. In contrast to the alienation of those who only knew the photo as a transient file, forever stored but never physically experienced.

Brian Griffin had worked on a commission especially for the festival, photographing people from Derby based industrial communities, and drawing on the composition gesture and lighting techniques used by the painter Joseph Wright. A lovely show, it was great for the students to see the quality of the work, the experimentation, and the relationship to and influence of painting.

Also at the Museum were two other excellent shows, Archive of modern conflict ‘on notes from home’ – as with Kessels, re-appropriates found imagery and photography, again, well presented and curated, the narratives emerging from the real and imagined. Finally at the museum was another excellent show by Andreas Meischner ‘TUV..towards the acid test’, the absurdity of human behaviour surrounding the testing of household objects, the show made for interesting and amusing viewing, showing how the photographic moment can create a number of possibilities outside of the time based, or durative experience.

 

Finally the show at the Chocolate factory site was the most exciting, housed in a factory space, and the work curated around the building, it appeared the workers had left just before the exhibition started. This echoes curatorial methods seen at festival such as Arles, photography festival in France , which Format seems to grow closer to with each festival. The work is current and the methodologies contemporary. Thomas Sauvin shows ‘the Bejing Silvermine’, images, negatives rescued from China, a real surprise due to the preconceptions of life under communist rule and media representation of the period – a definite highlight. A large amount of work here, and due to us running out of time, did not pay the attention I/we would have liked to, so briefly would point to Chris Coekin’s – The Altogether which looked very interesting, as did Rob Ball and the obsolete studio – interesting curation of contemporary tin types, the Caravan galley – Is Britain Great? And for Coal Story - Darek Fortek. 

An excellent day, that left all of us quite shattered, but happy, full of experiences and the memory of some really good photography.