Tag: Hammersmith

In Focus: David Hadland and Sarah Hickson

IN FOCUS
Poster IN FOCUS event organised by the Photojournalism Hub

Join us: Here

We are delighted to welcome documentary photographers David Hadland and Sarah Hickson as guests for our next In Focus event at Riverside Studios on 14 September 2026 at 7:15 pm.
In this edition of In Focus, David and Sarah explore the human stories shaped by conflict and displacement. Through their photography, they document lives transformed by crisis from soldiers living on the frontline in Ukraine to refugees navigating loss, uncertainty and the search for a new sense of belonging. Their work reflects on survival, resilience and the enduring connection between people, memory and place.

David Hadland is a documentary and portrait photographer from Luton, U.K. He lived in London for 11 years, where he graduated with a BA in Photography from Kingston University in 2018, and in 2024he graduated with an MA in Documentary Photography and Photojournalism from the London College of Communication. The core themes of David’s photography are identity, memory and the human experience. David is currently based in Kyiv, Ukraine, working on his long-term project documenting the full-scale war. 

Kozak is an ongoing project exploring the lives of Ukrainian soldiers stationed on the frontline. Through portraits and observations of daily life in the combat zone, the work examines how warfare disrupts the connection between people and the places they once called home.
War reshapes more than the landscape itself. Homes, streets, and fields once tied to ordinary life are transformed by conflict, altering how they are experienced and remembered. The soldiers I photograph inhabit dugouts along the frontline, living between the familiarity of home and the instability of war.
The title Kozak reflects a sense of continuity in Ukraine, linking the present to a longer history of resistance, identity, and place. Rather than focusing on spectacle or combat itself, the project centres on the everyday experience of soldiers living through war.

Sarah Hickson is an arts and social documentary photographer, now based in Brighton. Her practice explores the relationship between people, place and environment to create visual narratives that focus on themes of community and belonging, fracture and displacement.

She has worked on photographic commissions, residencies and projects in West and North Africa, India, Europe and around the UK. Sounds Unseen, an exhibition of work documenting a collaborative music project in the ‘Jungle’ refugee camp in Calais, was commissioned by St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York and Galway International Arts Festival. Her photo essay about Kolkata was featured in the book Writing Places, following an artistic residency with the National Centre for Writing in Norwich and Kolkata. Her 200 portraits of participants in the touring theatre project Truth to Power Café, formed an integral part of the theatrical narrative, bearing witness to the participants’ personal testimonies.
It is often the frayed edges of a story that draw Sarah’s attention, where vulnerability and fragility reside alongside hope and resilience. She will present an overview of her work on migration and displacement, referencing projects she has undertaken in Calais, Serbia and Greece, Galway and the UK.

She will also briefly talk about two other projects: her visits to the Taragalte Festival in the Sahara Desert in South Morocco, exploring the endangered environment of M’hamid El Ghizlaine and its historic nomadic culture, and her photo essay about Kolkata, capturing the nuanced and multi-layered nature of daily life in this city, where the past and the present collide. 

IN FOCUS is produced by the Photojournalism Hub in collaboration with Riverside Studios to present compelling, thought-provoking, independent and coraugeous photo storytelling.

IN FOCUS: A photography evening with Citlali Fabian and Jai Toor

IN FOCUS

To book a place: HERE

IN FOCUS is an event series by the Photojournalism Hub in collaboration with Riverside Studios that presents committed, independent contemporary documentary photography. This edition brings together two visual storytellers whose practices engage deeply with questions of identity, migration, memory, and place. Through distinct yet complementary approaches, Citlali Fabián and Jai Toor use photography to navigate personal and collective histories, examining how images can hold lived experience, cultural inheritance, and emotional truth. Their work moves between documentation and imagination, reflecting on displacement, diaspora, and the meaning of home across generations and geographies.

Citlali Fabian A Yalalteca (indigenous from Mexico) visual storyteller. She uses photography to explore ways of addressing identity and its connections with territory, migration, and community bonds.
Fabián is a  2024 BERTHA FOUNDATION Grantee,  2021 Photography and Social Justice Magnum fellow, a National Geographic Society explorer, with the project “I’m from Yalalag, a photo essay to explore the development of our Zapotec identity.” In 2021, she was awarded by the Art Council of England with a Develop Creative Practice Grant. In 2023 World Press Photo Contest Regional Jury. A 2020 Visura mentee. She was also named one of the Discoveries of the Meeting Place of FotoFest 2018 Biennale.
Her work has been shown in solo and collective exhibitions in Mexico, USA, Spain, and Argentina. Her work has been covered at The New York Times. And also has been appeared in different media like The LA Times, The Guardian, Buzzfeed, Remezcla, Revista Cuartoscuro, and IM Magazine among others. Her Mestiza series was selected as one of the New York Times Lens blog’s “13 Stories That Captured Photography in 2018” and as part of “10 Years of Photography, and Lens”.
She is also a member of Women Photograph and Indigenous Photograph collectives. Her work is part of the INBA/Toledo Collection, the Museum of Contemporary Photography of Chicago, and the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.  

Jai Toor (b. 1998) is a British-Indian photographer and artist based in the UK. His practice explores the interplay of diaspora and fantasy within the fabric of everyday surroundings. Working across documentary, fashion, and
music, Toor employs a multifaceted approach that integrates research, analogue processes, text, and archival photographs to construct layered visual narratives. Jai Toor’s practice centres around long-form photographic projects that often begin close to home — both literally and emotionally, before expanding outward. As someone who has lived across India and the UK, in many different homes, I’ve never felt a singular sense of place. This transient experience of “home” underpins much of my work, where themes of diaspora, migration, family, loss, and identity recur. He is particularly drawn to overlooked stories, fragments of personal or collective memory that might otherwise go undocumented. Photography, for me, is a way of capturing both presence and absence; a medium that can preserve histories, confront traumas, and evoke longing. He works across documentary, fashion, and music, but his approach remains consistent: research-led and open to intuition.
His projects often begin with reading, writing, and conversations, forming a kind of text-based map that guides me visually. I draw from national archives, interviews, and everyday encounters, weaving together photographs, text, and found materials. He uses analogue and digital photography interchangeably, but shooting on film allows him to slow down and connect more intentionally with the people and places he documents. He sees his work as semi-fictional, a space where documentation, re-imagination, and emotional truth coexist. He leans into ambiguity, allowing the viewer to enter the work without a fixed outcome, but with enough guidance to feel immersed. Collaboration is essential to this process: He often enters personal or communal spaces where trust, exchange, and shared authorship become part of the narrative. Ultimately, he is interested in how photography can hold contradictions, between fact and feeling, history and fantasy, familiarity and displacement, and in how storytelling can honour both the known and the unknowable.

IN FOCUS is presented by the Photojournalism Hub in collaboration with  Riverside Studios, bringing to the public compelling and thought-provoking contemporary documentary photography and photojournalism.