IN FOCUS
26th February 2024, 7 pm
Riverside Studios
101 Queen Caroline Street
London W6 9BN
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Photojournalism Hub and Riverside Studios are delighted to announce Denise Laura Baker and Etienne Bruce as the featured photographers for ‘In Focus,’ a captivating series of photography events. This series delves deep into the realm of socially engaged documentary photography, using the lens as a powerful tool for engagement and exploration. The event includes presentations, live interactive Q&As and a social.
Etienne Bruce will present us Xenitia, which is an archive, centered on displacement to Greece. It is framed by two motifs: “nostos” (Classical Greek; to return home, homecoming) and “algos” (Classical Greek; pain, grief). Together, these affect-laden words form the root of “nostalgia”. “Xenitia” itself is a Greek term that encompasses the state of being a foreigner, otherness, estrangement, loss, distance, and a profound yearning for home soil. And Dr. Denise Laura Baker will share Deeds, Not Words: motivations and methods of resistance from a photographer’s perspective, currently being shown until April 13th at Gallery 74, Waterside Arts in Sale, Manchester, which explores the myriad ways photography crosses into the realm of activism and the complex relationship between photojournalism and activism.
Denise Laura Baker is a socially engaged photojournalist and documentary photographer and storyteller, focusing on environmental and social issues, climate change, activism, and community. Through these she explores themes of connection, journeys, identity, change and transition. Denise’s photographic and creative work draws on influences from her career as a visual artist, and her previous career as an ethnographic psychologist where she interviewed and collected the stories of the people with whom she worked. In March 2020 she was featured as an emerging female photographer in film https://analoguewonderland.co.uk/blogs/film-news/female-voices-in-film-denise-laura-baker and in 2021 and 2022 she won PX3 State of the World. She has published numerous photographs in the mainstream press as well as photo essays in magazines such as New Internationalist, Open Democracy and Novara Media. Her work has been featured in group exhibitions as well as solo shows most notably LLAWN Llandudno Arts Weekend in 2019, Galeri Caernarfon, North Wales 2022, Islington Climate Centre 2023, The Black E Gallery in Liverpool as part of The World Transformed 2023 and Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool 2023. Denise’s work is currently being shown until April 13th at Gallery 74, Waterside Arts in Sale, Manchester.
Denise teaches and mentors, runs community arts workshops, and has received funding through the Arts Council for Wales, Creative Gwynedd, RBKC Creative Grants, The Westway Trust and Imaginary Millions. With Deeds, Not Words (Deeds, Not Words: motivations and methods of resistance from a photographer’s perspective) Denise explores the myriad ways photography crosses into the realm of activism and the complex relationship between photojournalism and activism. In this project she examines protest through the female eye, which has enabled her to connect with her own background in activism as well as others, and her relationship to photography as activism. @deniselaurabaker
Etienne Bruce is an Anglo-French visual artist, editorial photographer and educator currently based in London, UK. Her project-based work is a form of documentation driven by an engagement with the nature of the photographic image, which often includes an element of recording oral histories. A preoccupation with the relationship between form and content has led her to embrace different modes of expression including text, movement, sound, space, sequence and literary forms as portals through which to re-examine documentary image-making practice and embrace its inherent ambiguity. Through her work, Etienne seeks to challenge her perceptions and reinterpret things as she understands them while always striving to engage respectfully and collaboratively with the people and stories that are central to her practice. Etienne is a member of Women Photograph, she is Education & Training Manager at The Photography Foundation, and her book Xenitia was published by Zone6 Press in 2023. @etienne_bruce
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