An international group of eleven visual urbanists will form an exhibition at Lewisham Arthouse that will be one of the feature exhibitions of UrbanPhotoFest 2017, an international urban photography festival exploring contemporary visual practices focusing on urban life. For the second year, Urban Photo Village will be a key feature of the broader programme of the Festival. Eleven exhibitions - hosted by venues all located within walking distance of each other in Deptford - will be asked to reflect this year’s festival theme of Cartographies.
This group of photographers have backgrounds ranging from fine art and commercial photography, to photojournalism and architecture; their work addresses a wide variety of issues. The group span diverse cultural backgrounds; they are united by globalisation, a dominant Western point of view that plays a part in dictating perspective, and a common connection to South East London. Their personal cultural and geographical histories mean they are uniquely located within a modern landscape, producing bodies of work that explore, question and celebrate what can be united under the label of the urban.
Exhibitors explore the different spaces that constitute urban place; spaces improvised and specific in the way they serve communities, public spaces incidental and yet vital to everyday lives, and areas located in distant landscapes that are often overlooked in discussions about the urban. They look at the different constructed identities that are contained and produced by cities, and the ways these identities are shifting in response to changing landscapes.