In Focus: James Clifford Kent & Bharat Patel
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For our next In Focus at Riverside Studios on 12 October 2026 at 7:15 pm, we are delighted to welcome documentary photographers James Clifford Kent and Bharat Patel.
Exploring themes of belonging, healthcare and marginalisation, their work spans care environments in Cuba and the UK and the lives of India’s nomadic and de-notified nomadic communities. Kent and Patel will share their approaches to building trust, documenting sensitive human stories, and the role of documentary photography today.
James Clifford Kent is a London-based photographic artist whose research-led practice explores culture, health and social change. Through long-term relationships and sustained image-making, he navigates the space between intimate experience and broader social narratives, focusing on the textures of everyday life and the conditions that shape it. His award-winning work has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Academy of Arts, and featured in BBC News, The Guardian and The Times. James is co-founder and creative director of Yuma Studios and holds a PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London, a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society (FRPS) and a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA). He is the author of Aesthetics and the Revolutionary City and is currently developing his first photobook.
Central to Kent’s relationship-led practice is listening. His images result from lasting relationships and sustained dialogue with the people he photographs; allowing presence, voice and agency to shape the work. This approach also reflects a sharp awareness of positionality — the limits, responsibilities and ethics of working as an outsider. During his talk “Birth, Death and Everything In between” James will share work, stories and experiences from his long-term, ongoing work in Cuba, his photographs on maternity wards during the pandemic, and his recent work in hospices in the UK.
Bharat Patel is a documentary photographer using the camera as a tool to connect with people in overlooked, difficult, or marginalised conditions. His work focuses on labour, survival, and human dignity capturing the quiet strength in spaces society often ignores. Through intimate portraits and raw environments, he aims not to evoke pity but to provoke recognition. Even in silence, he wants his images to speak honestly and to make people look where they usually turn away.
He was born in India, raised in Uganda, and later moved to England for higher education. He also spent several years working in Brazil. Living across four continents has given him a deep appreciation for diverse cultures, which continues to shape his perspective and photographic approach.
In 2012, he began what would become a multi-year project to photograph one of the most marginalised groups in India: The Nomadic Tribes and the De-notified Nomadic Tribes. These communities, whose numbers are estimated to be in the tens of millions, face systemic exclusion and hardship. These nomads served as entertainers, singers, dancers, knife sharpeners, snake charmers, gymnasts, acrobats, tightrope walkers, basket makers, grain millers, agricultural labourers, and herbalists—each tribe possessing its own unique set of skills. However, their contribution and lifestyle is now at odds with the demands of modern society.
The work focuses on the history of these tribes and their subsequent marginalisation in part due to the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871 by the colonial ruler. An act which criminalised many tribes. Remnants of the act still reverberate today.
IN FOCUS is produced by the Photojournalism Hub in collaboration with Riverside Studios to present compelling, thought-provoking, independent and courageous photo storytelling.
