Photography Down The Line Stills: Centre for Photography

Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Kavi Pujara.



Kavi Pujara is a self-taught photographer making personal, long-term documentary photo projects in his home town of Leicester. His work is included in this years Hayward Gallery touring group exhibition: After the End of History: British Working Class Photography 1989-2024. His debut project 'This Golden Mile' was first exhibited at the Martin Parr Foundation in 2022 and coincided with his first monograph of the same name, published by Setanta Books.



www.kavipujara.com



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Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Craig Atkinson from Café Royal Books.



This episode was recorded to coincide with the exhibition CAFÉ ROYAL BOOKS at Stills which ran from 10 November 2023 to 10 February 2024.

Craig Atkinson is an artist and lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire. In 2005 he founded Café Royal Books and since 2012 he has been producing weekly publications on documentary photography, linked to Britain and Ireland, in an accessible and affordable zine format. Now spanning more than 600 issues, Café Royal Books has built-up a large, unique printed archive of documentary photography with broad appeal for its photographic, social and historic interest. Amongst those that collect Café Royal Books publications are universities and collections including: MoMA, New York; Tate; and the V&A, London. The exhibition, ‘Café Royal Books: Documentary, Zines and Subversion,’ was held at the Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol in 2022 and in the same year, Café Royal Books received the Royal Photographic Society Award for Photographic Publishing. 

www.caferoyalbooks.com



@caferoyalbooks (Instagram)

 



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Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Alicia Bruce.

Alicia Bruce is an award-winning, working-class photographer, community collaborator, educator, and activist based in Scotland. Her photography sits between documentary and staged imagery focusing on communities, environments, and human rights. Alicia Bruce is a member of the collective Women Photograph. Her first monograph 'I Burn But I Am Not Consumed' Daylight Books (USA), 2023 documents sixteen years of Donald Trump’s impact on a coastal Scottish community near where the artist grew up. 
Images from this monograph are currently being exhibited at Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago and soon at Lishui Photography Festival, China. 
Alicia’s photographs have been exhibited and published internationally, winning several artists’ residencies and bursaries including the Royal Scottish Academy Morton Award. Her images have been featured in Le Monde, The Guardian, FT Weekend, The Times, The Scotsman, BBC News and STV News, and are represented in several public and private collections including the National Galleries of Scotland, St Andrews University Special Collections, UK Parliament, Martin Parr Foundation and The RSA. She recently gave talks at Art Institute Chicago, MoCP, Chicago, Columbia College, International Centre for Photography and School of Visual Arts in New York, Aberdeen Art Gallery, BOP Bristol and Stills.   Exhibitions include MoCP, Chicago, VU Photo, Quebec, National Galleries of Scotland, Stills, Street Level, Ffotogallery, Impressions Gallery, Open Eye and more. 
Her commissioned portfolio features clients including Harpers Magazine (NYC), Reuters, Project Ability, engage, Zero Tolerance, Crisis and more.  
 
As an educator, Alicia has over 15 years experience teaching in communities, galleries and in further and higher education.   She is a Teaching Fellow at Edinburgh College of Art (Photography and Fine Art) as well as at Edinburgh University Centre for Open Learning. She taught Darkroom, analogue and digital workshops at Street Level Photoworks for over a decade as well as in Scotland's Colleges (Stevenson College, Fife College and City of Glasgow College) and National Galleries of Scotland.  She is founder of Portobello Photography School and holds a PDA in teaching. 
 
Current Exhibition 
'Love: Still Not the Lesser' Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago 
 
Next Exhibition 
2023 Lishui Photography Festival, China 
In partnership with Format Festival 
 
Website: www.aliciabruce.co.uk
Instagram: aliciabrucephoto


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Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Markéta Luskačová.

This special episode of Photography Down The Line is a recording of a conversation between Ben Harman and the photographer Markéta Luskačová at a public event held at Stills, Edinburgh on 12th August 2023. The event marked the launch of Luskačová's solo exhibition at Stills. 



Markéta Luskačová was born in 1944 and became a freelance photographer in 1968 whilst undertaking postgraduate studies in Photography at the Academy of Film and Fine Arts, Prague. She relocated to London in 1975 and was a Nominee Photographer with Magnum Photographic Agency, Paris from 1976-80. Since 1971, Luskačová’s work has featured in exhibitions around the world and notable solo exhibitions have been held at the V&A, London (1983-84); Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood (1989); Whitechapel Gallery, London (1991); Stills Gallery, Sydney (1998); Leica Gallery, Prague (2014); Tate Britain, London (2018-19); and The Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol (2019).

 

Luskačová's solo exhibition at Stills opened for the Edinburgh Art Festival in August 2023. It brought together more than 50 works from some of Luskačová’s best-known series covering subjects such as: Pilgrims; Juvenile Jazz Bands in the North of England; Durham Cathedral and Chorister School; London Markets; London Street Musicians, Chiswick Women’s Aid and Carnivals in the Czech Republic. Stills worked with Luskačová to select photographs on the theme of children – an interest that permeates almost all of her work and for several years was the main subject of her pictures. By following this thread, we united photographs made around the UK and in Ireland, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, dating from 1964-2009. The exhibition has been developed in partnership with the Centre for British Photography, London where it will be presented in 2024.







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Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Kelly O'Brien.



Kelly O'Brien is a creative worker, documentary photographic artist, educator and PhD researcher.

Within her working practice, Kelly explores visual transformation and storytelling in connection to personal and political narratives through making and theory. She is interested in the photographic relationship to absence, investigating how invisibility can be utilised as a tool of possibility and perception to visualise erased and misrepresented histories. The themes that currently anchor her work are class, labour, family, care and liberation.  

Kelly is curious about the potential in experimental collaboration and collective participation, in both the production and the dissemination of her work. She works within an intersectional feminist framework where an ethical questioning of the status quo and power relations are central. 

She has been the recipient of several awards and her work has been widely exhibited and published. With over 15 years of experience as a creative labourer, Kelly has worked as a community arts facilitator and producer, collaborating on projects that focus on radical social justice. She also lectures in photography, working in partnership with universities and art institutions in the UK and internationally.

Instagram  @kelly.o.brien







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Ben Harman, Director of Stills: Centre for Photography in Edinburgh, speaks to Marilena Vlachopoulou.



Marilena Vlachopoulou is a documentary and portrait photographer from Athens based in Glasgow. Since graduating from Kelvin College in 2018, she has been documenting Glasgow’s music scene and gig landscape in a variety of analogue formats. Her work has been featured widely, from the pages of The Herald newspaper to the walls of The Benaki Museum, as part of Athens Photo Festival 2020. She has been commissioned by House of VANS London, Govanhill Baths, The Skinny, The Wire, Polaroid and others.



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