Details Announced for 5th FORMAT International Photography Festival at QUAD Derby

DERBY.- Programme details have been announced for the 5th FORMAT International Photography Festival, by Louise Clements, which will run in QUAD and venues around Derby from 4th March until 3rd April 2011. Entitled ‘Right Here, Right Now: Exposures from the Public Realm’ this years’ festival has been curated around the theme of street photography through a wide variety of approaches. The festival celebrates the wealth of contemporary practice in international photography and is an opportunity to see an incredible range of new work alongside some of the best-known practitioners in the world, as well as developing opportunities for audiences to see, debate, develop and engage in the best of what photography is and can be. QUAD will be the base for FORMAT festival activity, which takes place across Derby.

The festival programme consists of exhibitions, portfolio reviews, workshops, commissions, talks, screenings, mass participation events, photo collectives, conferences and an international meeting place. The festival is organised in two strands, FOCUS and EXPOSURE. FOCUS will show exhibitions and new commissions by leading international artists, while EXPOSURE will feature work by some 50 of the most exciting new photographers from around the world, alongside public participation projects.

FOCUS Highlights include the FORMAT11 Commission by Magnum photographer Bruce Gilden at Derby Museum and Art Gallery. Leading Magnum photographers will also present a major show of 140 large scale street photos in Derby Market Place.

QUAD Gallery will hosting world-renowned photographers of international significance in a variety of media. FOCUS Exhibition will include the street photography of Amy Stein, Joel Meyerowitz, Michael Wolf, Zhao Liang, Polly Braden, Raghu Rai, Orville Robertson, and WassinkLundgren.

Street photography collective In- Public will showcase 40 works by their top photographers at Derby Museum and Art Gallery. All of the photographers featured in the exhibition have the ability to see the unusual in the everyday in a dynamic collection of images, a new documentary by In- Public organiser Nick Turpin features the artists and sharing their approaches to capturing the moment in public spaces. Acclaimed Indian photographer Raghu Rai’s Invocation to India will be showing at the New Art Exchange, Nottingham during the Festival.

As part of the EXPOSURE strand, The Paul Hill EXPOSURE Award Winner, Iranian artist Mehraneh Atashi, will explore life in a city undergoing rapid change in an exhibition entitled Tehran’s Self Portraits at Derby Museum and Art Gallery. Vidisha Saini’s series Pratibimb presents portraits of a cluster of lower caste communities in India, nomadic costumed artists going door-to-door at Déda. Street Life is the result of a project by young people from Derby working collaboratively with counterparts from the Seagull Foundation for the Arts in Kolkata, India, and the work consists of their immediate responses to seeing each others’ cities through the camera and will be on display in Derby Market Place.

There is a chance for members of the public to take part in Mob FORMAT, a mass submission online project in association with Flickr. Submitted photographs will be shown on the BBC Big Screen in Derby Market Place, and on mobile screens around Derby, while a centrally located ‘pop-up gallery’ will print and display the best submissions daily in a constantly-evolving exhibition.

The FORMAT exhibition programme will be accompanied by an extensive series of events, including the FORMAT International Festival conference, portfolio reviews, talks and workshops by leading international artists and practitioners from around the world. Festival tours, the Portfolio Awards, and the comedy performance Al Pitcher’s Picture Show. A selection of films that have influenced and been influenced by street photography will be screened at QUAD cinemas throughout the Festival.

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