Apr 01, 2022

Photo Club Bristol - Show & Tell | 31st March 2022

On Thursday 31st March we ran our second event since reigniting Photo Club Bristol, supported by Jack's Lab.

We wanted to try out a sort-of-new format (new to us anyway), where we created a forum for people to be able to get up and talk about themselves, their work, projects on the go or in the pipeline, or ideas that they're trying to get off the ground, or pretty much anything photo-related that they wanted to talk about.

Suffice to say, we are absolutely bowled over by the resounding success of the night. We're so happy with the incredible turnout and with the amazing feedback we received from everyone both on the night, and since.

It is very clear to see that the Photo Club is something that's needed in Bristol, and that the community, you guys, are here and screaming out for stuff and spaces to create, network, socialise and have fun, collectively.

I won't bang on and on, you heard enough of that from me on the night! But I promised we would post out links to everyone who spoke last night, so it can live as a resource on here for everyone to checkout themselves.

I want to say a huge thank you to the following people:

Kyle McDougall for travelling over to Bristol to come and talk to us about some of the things he's learned, and is still learning about transitioning his work from a Canadian/US landscape to the UK. For me, I think a lot of what Kyle spoke about probably resonated with a lot of us, and hopefully we were all able to take some valuable things away from chatting with Kyle. Kyle's Instagram is linked above, you can watch and subscribe to his YouTube channel here, and you can see more of Kyle's work, including his body of work 'American Mile' over on his website here.

Tom Groves and Louis Little, from Bread & Butter Studio in Bristol - A massive thank you for coming down and telling us all about both your backgrounds, working for the illustrious Magnum Photographer Martin Parr (and the Martin Parr Foundation) and taking that experience and using it to setup Bread & Butter Studio, printing some incredible work from some of the countries finest photographers. All of the relevant Instagram's are linked above, but you can also check out Bread & Butter Studio over on their website here.

We then had Sophie Sherwood from the Real Photography Company, who are a CIC (community interest company) based in St. Pauls, Bristol. Sophie and the Real Photography Company run the community-focused St. Pauls Learning Centre and Community Darkroom, which provide affordable and accessible spaces to hire for workshops, courses or just if you want to do some printing in the darkroom.

Along with Sophie, we had the pleasure of hearing from Tim Pearse, a Bristol-based photographer and artist working with traditional analogue processes, who has just set up Negative Thinking, an open-access black and white darkroom and photography studio in Totterdown, Bristol. Offering hourly rental for processing, hand printing and a host of alternative photographic processes, including wet plate collodion.

Last, but not least, we heard from Bristol-based Scouse music photographer, Johnny Morgan. Johnny shared with us some examples and stories from a project of his, photographing portraits of musicians on 4x5 large format, which he hand printed at St. Pauls Community Darkroom.

Below are a few more snaps from the night...