LOOK/13 presents the core programme for its second edition, launching on Liverpool’s Light Night, 17 May 2022.  Bringing together influential and established photographers, presented alongside international emerging talent, LOOK/13 will invite its dynamic line-up of artists to explore the idea of subjectivity and selfhood, summing up its central theme in the question, ‘who do you think you are?’

‘WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?’

Featuring August Sander, Rankin, Weegee, Martin Parr, Tom Wood, Charles Fréger, Eva Stenram, Kurt Tong + much more

The festival begins with an event-packed launch weekend. Highlights include Redeye’s fifth National Photography Symposium (17 May), and PULSE (18 May), an afternoon of presentations by some of the UK’s most influential photographers, produced in collaboration with Miniclick.

LOOK/13 is proud to be collaborating with Liverpool’s most prestigious museums and galleries to exhibit a diverse programme of exhibitions and events. The Bluecoat will present work by two of the founding fathers of photography, August Sander (1876-1964) and Arthur Fellig aka Weegee (1899-1968), whose varying styles of realism and portraiture will set the scene for the entire festival and its theme. Elsewhere in the gallery, I exist (in some way), will feature work by eleven artists who explore identity in the contemporary Arab world, while Adam Lee’s Identity Documents will look at what is revealed and concealed in people’s bookshelves.

The Walker Art Gallery will host three exhibitions including a major new project by the internationally renowned photographer Rankin. Produced in collaboration with the BBC, ALIVE: In the Face of Death, will be devoted in part to newly commissioned images of people who know they are running out of time. Complementing this much-anticipated show is a body of work from the Keith Medley Archive, Double Take, featuring high-street studio portraits of Merseysiders in the 1960s. Each sitter was shot twice using the same glass-plate negative, resulting in a compellingly eerie series of duos. The final Walker Art Gallery exhibition presents early and largely unseen work by two of Britain’s best-known and much loved photographers, Tom Wood and Martin Parr. This selection, much of it shot in Merseyside in the late 1970s and early 1980s, displays early explorations, showing the photographers’ signature styles in formation.

Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool’s dedicated photography space that re-launched in 2011, presents the first UK solo exhibition by the French photographer Charles Fréger. A selection of Fréger’s portrait projects will examine the performance of group identity through a carnivalesque array of costume and ritual. The exhibition will include works from Fréger’s hugely successful ‘Wilder Mann’ photo book, which explores the mythological figure of the ‘Wild Man’. Open Eye is also proud to present the first full solo presentation of Eva Stenram’s ‘Drape’ project, featuring found erotic photos from the 1960s that Stenram has subtly manipulated and transformed into unsettling, disarming, sometimes comedic images.

The Exhibition Research Centre at the Art & Design Academy (Liverpool John Moores University) will present BLACKOUT, an international group show co-curated with artist Imogen Stidworthy, exploring the boundaries of subjectivity through video and installation works by Danica Dakic, Aya Ben Ron, Willem Oorebeek, and Dominique Hurth.

In the Victoria Gallery & Museum, Hong Kong-based photographer Kurt Tong explores the relationship between self and family in The Queen, The Chairman and I, a project that brings together objects from the photographers’ multi-faceted family history with his own photographs and writings in an installation featuring Super-8 films and a working Chinese tearoom. This will be the first full realisation of this major project.

Wolstenholme Creative Space presents Liverpool, Unfinished an evocative series of colour portraits and landscapes by Rob Bremner, shot while he was studying in Wales in the 1980s and shown here for the first time.

The Caravan Gallery will be setting up camp for the duration of the festival, with exhibitions in Liverpool One and the Museum of Liverpool, reflecting the reality and surreality of everyday life on Merseyside.

In various sites around the city Redeye, the Photography Network will present group projects by participants in Lightbox 2, an intensive professional development programme which aims to launch the careers of some of the UK’s most promising photographers.

LOOK/13 is also working with numerous partners to promote a Parallel Programme of exhibitions and events that coincide with and complement the festival. As well as a host of independent projects that respond directly to the festival, this programme includes some of the city’s leading spaces. Moyra Davey at Tate Liverpool (8 June – 6 October) will present new works conceived in Liverpool alongside existing work by the Canadian-born, New York-based photographer and filmmaker. Tate Liverpool will also be presenting, for the first time since acquisition, Barbara Kruger’s 1991/2012 work Who Owns What (Part of DLA Piper Series: Constellations, opening 3 May). The programme also includes FACT’s exhibition, The Art of Pop Video.

LOOK/13 Festival Team

The festival’s delivery team is led by Patrick Henry (director) and Harjeet Kaur (festival manager). Patrick Henry was previously director of Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool (2004 -12) and curator of exhibitions at the National Media Museum (1998 -2004). Harjeet has curated and managed a range of national and international exhibitions and festivals for organisations including the British Council.

Partners

Liverpool’s visual arts offer is regarded by many as the strongest of any regional city in the country. LOOK/13 is working in close collaboration with a wide range of local and national partners, including Redeye, Miniclick, Photovoice, the Bluecoat, The Walker, Victoria Gallery & Museum, Open Eye Gallery, The Exhibition Research Centre (Art & Design Academy, Liverpool John Moores University), Museum of Liverpool, Wolstenholme Creative Space, The Caravan Gallery, Liverpool One, Side Gallery, Light Night, Tate Liverpool and FACT.

 About LOOK

LOOK is the non-profit distributing company that initiates and delivers the biennial Liverpool International Photography Festival in North West England. LOOK champions photography as a powerful and significant creative art form. LOOK explores the impact of photography on 21st century global culture as the image-making medium most closely linked to people’s everyday lives through its great democracy of use and its long association with popular culture. The members of LOOK’s board are Colin McPherson (chair), Lawrence Giles, Paul Herrmann, John Sutcliffe, Adam Lee, Colin Hughes and Sara Jayne Parsons.

LOOK has its roots in LOOK07, a season of events initiated by Redeye in Manchester in spring 2007. Soon after LOOK07 a group of North West-based photographers - all active members of Redeye - began work on plans for an international photography biennial in Liverpool. 

Core Funding

The festival is being supported using public funding by Arts Council England’ and from Liverpool City Council’s Arts and Culture Investment Programme.

Where: Liverpool, United Kingdom

Open: 17th May - 15th June 2013

For more information please visit: www.lookphotofestival.com