Established | November 1972 |
---|---|
Location | Centenary Square, Bradford, England |
Coordinates | 53°47′35″N1°45′21″W / 53.793006°N 1.755769°W |
Founder | Val Williams and Andrew Sproxton |
Director | Anne McNeill |
Website | www |
Impressions Gallery is an independent contemporary photography gallery in Bradford, England. It was established in 1972 and located in York until moving to Bradford in 2007. Impressions Gallery also runs a photography bookshop, publishes its own books and sells prints. It is one of the oldest venues for contemporary photography in Europe. [1]
Impressions Gallery is a charity, a not-for-profit organisation, funded by Arts Council England and Bradford Metropolitan District Council. [2]
The gallery is host to a temporary exhibitions programme with on average six exhibitions each year, often solo retrospective shows of mid-career photographers, and also some group shows.
The gallery space incorporates a bookshop. The organisation publishes its own books and catalogues, often to accompany its exhibitions, either by itself or in association with others such as Dewi Lewis Publishing and Photoworks. It has published work by Melanie Friend, Paul Floyd Blake, Joy Gregory, Anna Fox, Trish Morrissey, Tessa Bunney, Gavin Parry, Andy Lock, Stefan Ruiz and Laurie Long.
The gallery was founded by Val Williams and husband Andrew Sproxton in November 1972, opening in York with two exhibitions, Butlin's by the Sea by Martin Parr and Daniel Meadows (its first exhibition), and Whitby by Frank Meadow Sutcliffe. [3] [4] [5] [6] : 25 Parr and Meadows showed work at Impressions throughout the 1970s, with solo shows of Parr's Home Sweet Home in 1974 and Beauty Spots in 1976 and Meadows' Free Photographic Omnibus in 1974 and Clayton Ward in 1978. [7] Some of the other photographers whose work the gallery has shown are:
In 1976 the gallery moved to Colliergate in York, then moved again to nearby Castlegate in York in 1992. In 2007 the gallery moved to Centenary Square, Bradford. [8]
The gallery's archive, dating back to 1972, was given to the National Media Museum, Bradford, in 2013. It is called the 'Impressions Gallery Archive', a part of the National Photography Collection. It was believed then to be the first time a publicly funded photography gallery has had its archive cared for and made accessible by a national institution. [1]
Martin Parr is a British documentary photographer, photojournalist and photobook collector. He is known for his photographic projects that take an intimate, satirical and anthropological look at aspects of modern life, in particular documenting the social classes of England, and more broadly the wealth of the Western world.
Anna Fox is a British documentary photographer, known for a "combative, highly charged use of flash and colour". In 2019 she was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society.
The Photographers' Gallery was founded in London by Sue Davies opening on 14 January 1971, as the first public gallery in the United Kingdom devoted solely to photography.
Daniel Meadows is an English photographer turned maker of digital stories, and a teacher of photography turned teacher of participatory media.
Gordon MacDonald works with photography as an artist, writer, curator, press photographer and educator.
Melanie Friend is a photographer/artist. From 2003 to 2019 Friend was Reader in Photography in the School of Media, Film and Music at University of Sussex, England.
Brighton Photo Biennial (BPB), now known as Photoworks Festival, is a month-long festival of photography in Brighton, England, produced by Photoworks. The festival began in 2003 and is often held in October. It plays host to curated exhibitions across the city of Brighton and Hove in gallery and public spaces. Previous editions have been curated by Jeremy Millar (2003), Gilane Tawadros (2006), Julian Stallabrass (2008), Martin Parr (2010) and Photoworks (2012). Brighton Photo Biennial announced its merger with Photoworks in 2006 and in 2020 its name was changed to Photoworks Festival.
Paul Reas is a British social documentary photographer and university lecturer. He is best known for photographing consumerism in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s.
Val Williams is a British curator and author who has become an authority on British photography. She is the Professor of the History and Culture of Photography at the London College of Communication, part of the University of the Arts London, and was formerly the Curator of Exhibitions and Collections at the Hasselblad Center.
Photography and the Archive Research Centre (PARC) is a defunct organisation in London that commissions new research into photography and culture, curates and produces exhibitions and publications, organises seminars, study days, symposia and conferences, and supervises PhD students. It is a part of University of the Arts London (UAL), is based at UAL's London College of Communication at Elephant & Castle and was designated by UAL in 2003. PARC was shut down after twenty years of operating in 2023.
Café Royal Books is an independent publisher of photography photobooks or zines, run by Craig Atkinson and based in Ainsdale, Southport, England. Café Royal Books produces small-run publications predominantly documenting social and cultural change, Including themes of youth, leisure, music, protest, race, religion, industry, identity, architecture and fashion, often in Britain and Ireland, using both new work and photographs from archives. Café Royal Books has been operating since 2005 and has published over 950 books and zines.
Photoworks is a UK development agency dedicated to photography, based in Brighton, England and founded in 1995. It commissions and publishes new photography and writing on photography; publishes the Photoworks Annual, a journal on photography and visual culture, tours Photoworks Presents, a live talks and events programme, and produces the Brighton Photo Biennial, the UK's largest international photography festival Brighton Photo Biennial,. It fosters new talent through the organisation of the Jerwood/Photoworks Awards in collaboration with the Jerwood Charitable Foundation.
Chris Harrison is an English photographer known for his work which has explored ideas of home, histories and class.
Clare Strand is a British conceptual photographer based in Brighton and Hove in the UK. She makes, as David Campany puts it, "black-and-white photographs that would be equally at home in an art gallery, the offices of a scientific institute, or the archive of a dark cult. ... They look like evidence, but of what we cannot know."
Peter Mitchell is a British documentary photographer, known for documenting Leeds and the surrounding area for more than 40 years. Mitchell's photographs have been published in three monographs of his own. His work was exhibited at Impressions Gallery in 1979, and nearly thirty years later was included in major survey exhibitions throughout the UK including at Tate Britain and Media Space in London, and the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford. Mitchell's work is held in the permanent collections of the Royal Photographic Society and Leeds Art Gallery.
Document Scotland is a photography collective founded in 2012 by Sophie Gerrard, Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert, Stephen McLaren and Colin McPherson. It makes documentary photography about Scotland, which it has exhibited at numerous venues in Scotland and beyond, including the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Impressions Gallery, the Martin Parr Foundation and the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Document Scotland has also produced a number of publications and also stages live events and community-focused projects.
Lua Ribeira is a Galician photographer, based in Bristol in the UK. She is interested in "using the photographic medium as a means to create encounters that establish relationships and question structural separations between people." She is a Nominee member of Magnum Photos and was joint winner of the Jerwood/Photoworks Award in 2017. Her series Noises is about femininity and British dancehall culture.
Sophie Gerrard is a Scottish documentary photographer whose work focuses on environmental and social themes. She is a lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University, a member of the board of trustees for Impressions Gallery in Bradford, and a co-founder member of Document Scotland. She has won the Jerwood Photography Award, the Fuji Film Bursary and the Magenta Foundation Award.
Stephen McLaren is a Scottish photographer, writer, and curator, based in Los Angeles. He has edited various photography books published by Thames & Hudson—including Street Photography Now (2010)—and produced his own, The Crash (2018). He is a co-founder member of Document Scotland. McLaren's work has been shown at FACT in Liverpool as part of the Look – Liverpool International Photography Festival and in Document Scotland group exhibitions at Impressions Gallery, Bradford and at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh. His work is held in the collection of the University of St Andrews.
Brian Griffin is a British photographer. His portraits of 1980s pop musicians led to him being named the "photographer of the decade" by The Guardian in 1989. His work is held in the permanent collections of the Arts Council, British Council, Victoria and Albert Museum and National Portrait Gallery, London.