The ex­hi­bi­tion Con­tem­po­rary British Pho­tog­ra­phy pre­sents works by well-known mas­ters and emerg­ing artists. With each artist show­cas­ing their own pro­ject, the show in­cludes about a hun­dred works.

The show in­cludes works by John Peter Askew, Stephen Bur­ridge, Annabel Elgar, Kim Ja­cob­sen To, Lucy Alex Mac, Paulina Surys, Oliver Tru­elove, Nicol Vizioli, and video artist Kate McMil­lan.

The pro­jects often con­trast each other as the artists come from dif­fer­ent parts of the pho­to­graphic spec­trum. Stephen Bur­ridge shows typ­i­cal is­landers, while Oliver Tru­elove works with fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phy, en­gag­ing res­i­dents of South Lon­don. Kim Ja­cob­sen To uses the lan­guage of fash­ion pho­tog­ra­phy to tell a story of the Son of Venus, while Lucy Alex Mac gives the Wiz­ard of Oz char­ac­ters a pop art spin. John Peter Askew has cho­sen for his se­ries of urban pho­tographs an epi­graph from Charles Baude­laire, “What strange phe­nom­ena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open.”

As we move from the city to the coun­try­side, mys­ti­cal sto­ries begin to un­fold, for­got­ten leg­ends come to life, and dystopian vi­sions of the fu­ture emerge. Nicol Vizioli ex­pe­ri­ences an ex­is­ten­tial in­sight on her search for the sense of be­long­ing in the moun­tains; Annabel Elgar re­vives some urban leg­ends, lead­ing us through a fan­tasy labyrinth of odd­ball ac­tiv­ity; and Paulina Surys in­ter­prets Hi­erony­mus Bosch's trip­tych The Gar­den of Earthly De­lights, re­vers­ing the ini­tial in­ven­tion of pho­tog­ra­phy as a repet­i­tive me­chan­i­cal process and turn­ing each print into a unique ob­ject.

Lucy Alex Mac. Photo from the se­ries "Land of Oz"

The show fea­tures an im­mer­sive film in­stal­la­tion by Kate McMil­lan The Lost Girl, set in the postapoc­a­lyp­tic fu­ture, where the char­ac­ter at­tempts to cre­ate a past and a fu­ture from the de­bris that is washed up from the ocean. Look­ing closely at the residue of the past, trig­ger­ing mem­o­ries, the artist brings into light the his­to­ries and ideas that have been over-looked.

Aim­ing to pre­sent the work of con­tem­po­rary UK pho­tog­ra­phers to the Russ­ian au­di­ence in all the di­ver­sity of in­ter­ests and cre­ative pur­suits of the artists, the show in­ves­ti­gates the in­ter­play be­tween the ideas of mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and search for re­gional iden­tity, the study of cor­po­re­al­ity and gen­der roles, the as­pects of women's dis­course and re­flec­tions on age­ing.

The ex­hi­bi­tion is or­ga­nized by ROSPHOTO and Saint Pe­ters­burg A-YA So­ci­ety in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Mag­num Pho­tos and the Uni­ver­sity of Green­wich in Lon­don as part of the Fes­ti­val of Con­tem­po­rary British Pho­tog­ra­phy. The event is part of the in­ter­na­tional UK — Rus­sia Cre­ative Bridge 2021–2022 pro­gram, sup­ported by the Cul­ture and Ed­u­ca­tion De­part­ment of the British Em­bassy in Moscow.

Pro­ject part­ners

In­for­ma­tion part­ners