Exhibitions
Photo | Frome again brings an inclusive and thought-provoking perspective on photography to Frome & the Southwest. The festival approaches contemporary documentary with a broad lens, and the artist line-up reflects that vision, featuring world-class national and international names, photography to explore the history of the Southwest region, and showcasing the talents of local and student photographers.
The 2025 theme was inEquality, as noted in the Festival introduction.
All exhibitions are FREE to visit.
Please see detailed programme for exact dates and times – DOWNLOAD HERE
MPB was Photo|Frome’s Official Sponsor, the largest global platform to buy, sell and trade used photo and video gear.
Arts Council England Photo|Frome was supported using public funding by the National lottery through Arts Council England.
Frome Town Council is Photo|Frome’s Local partner.
Rook Lane Chapel | Bath Street, BA11 1DN
10:00 – 16:00 Sunday 6 April to Sunday 27 April
One of Photo|Frome’s principal installations features Joss Barratt’s photography taken whilst working on set with acclaimed director Ken Loach. Loach is known for his focus on marginalised communities, this includes ‘Carla’s Song’, images from which we are pairing with Susan Meiselas’ breakthrough colour reportage from Nicaragua. By juxtaposing fiction and reality we explore common themes but from totally different angles, giving new perspectives. The work of Jim Brogden, Nick Hedges, Tish Murtha, Roland Ramanan, Paul Seawright, and Fast Forward: Women in Photography (curated by Anna Fox) is also featured alongside other Ken Loach films.
Rook Lane Chapel
Susan Meiselas
Susan Meiselas is a documentary photographer based in New York. She is the author of Carnival Strippers (1976), Nicaragua (1981), Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History (1997), Pandora’s Box (2001), Encounters with the Dani (2003) Prince Street Girls (2016), A Room Of Their Own (2017), Tar Beach (2020), and Carnival Strippers Revisited (2022).
Susan is the recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Photography title of the Sony World Photography Awards 2025.
Susan is well known for her documentation of human rights issues in Latin America. Her photographs are included in North American and international collections. In 1992 she was made a MacArthur Fellow, received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2015), and most recently the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize (2019) and the first Women in Motion Award from Kering and the Rencontres d’Arles. Mediations, a survey exhibition of her work from the 1970s to the present, was recently exhibited at the Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Jeu de Paume, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Instituto Moreira Salles in São Paulo, Kunst Haus Wien, C/O Berlin, Kunstmuseum Magdeburg, and FOMU in Antwerp. Susan has been the President of the Magnum Foundation since 2007, with a mission to expand diversity and creativity in documentary photography.
Photo|Frome is delighted to be showing a selection of Susan’s ‘Nicaragua‘ work. Still considered by some to be her signature work, these startling colour photographs of the lead-up to the overthrow of the Somoza regime and subsequent Sandinista victory were widely distributed in the international press and published in the 1981 book ‘Nicaragua’. A landmark in war photography for its pioneering and controversial use of colour, Susan’s work in Nicaragua remains a paragon of engaged, subjective documentary coverage.
This image: Traditional Indian dance mask from the town of Monimbo, adopted by the rebels during the fight against Somoza to conceal identity. Nicaragua, 1978. © Susan Meiselas / Magnum Photos
Rook Lane Chapel
Joss Barratt
Joss Barratt is a professional photographer primarily shooting stills for the film and television industry. Originally a photojournalist, his quick eye for storytelling pictures blends a personal approach with the particular demands of film sets and varied commercial assignments. He has worked with many different directors, including Richard Eyre, Pawel Pawlikowski, Dominic Savage, and has worked on over 20 films with Ken Loach.
“Whilst working on set my pictures can arrive from anywhere, I try and stay constantly connected to the space and the energy of the people I’m working with to catch fleeting moments of truth in a make-believe world.”
Rook Lane Chapel
Jim Brogden
Jim Brogden‘s urban landscape project in Bradford looks at the city through a sociological perspective, focusing on the visual contrasts found in marginalised areas where people have to balance their private and public lives. The goal was to capture the mysterious character of these places and the people living there without pushing a specific political message. Through repeated photographic studies the project reveals images of this complex and distinctive northern city, reflecting its unique atmosphere and mood.
Jim is Associate Professor in Creative Practice, and Director of Practice Research in the School of Media and Communication at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Photography and the Non-Place: The Cultural Erasure of the City (Palgrave, 2019).
ROOK LANE CHAPEL
Nick Hedges
Nick Hedges studied photography at Birmingham College of Art. His final project was working with Birmingham Housing Trust on an exhibition about the city’s badly housed, setting the tone for his life’s work on social issues. On leaving college, Nick photographed Shelter‘s ‘National Campaign for the Homeless’, helping gain significant public attention to the problem, and establishing Shelter as a national voice still very active to this day.
This photograph: Mrs M puts her children to bed in their Balsall Heath slum, Birmingham 1969.
ROOK LANE CHAPEL
Tish Murtha
Patricia Anne ‘Tish’ Murtha left home to study at the School of Documentary Photography at The University of Wales, set up by Magnum Photos member David Hurn. After graduating in 1978, she returned to Newcastle and set out to document ‘marginalised communities from the inside’. Unlike other photographers who came to document poverty in the region, Tish lived it as the third of ten children of Irish descent, brought up in a council house in Elswick in Newcastle.
This photograph: Richard and Louise, Elswick Kids (1978) by Tish Murtha © Ella Murtha, All rights reserved.
Rook Lane Chapel
Roland Ramanan
Roland Ramanan is a London-based documentary photographer with a background in music and education. In 2012 he started a long-term documentary project on the issue-affected group of people who gravitate towards a corner of East London called Gillett Square. The square was the starting point that lead him to many other aspects of the community. The work has been featured in Vice magazine among others and has won various awards, including being shortlisted for the Royal Photographic Society documentary awards 2023. In 2022, Roland was one of the finalists in the Portrait of Britain awards.
The square was derelict and underdeveloped for years until, in the 1990s, it became an experiment in urban regeneration. Like the dominoes they play in the square, those lives are often precarious. For over ten years, Roland was privileged to be allowed into the lives and homes of some of those he met, to photograph their fights and struggles; their families and their lovers.
‘Dominoes‘ touches on the universal themes of love, death, hope. and the evolution of urban communities.
Rook Lane Chapel
Paul Seawright
Paul Seawright is Professor of Photography and Executive Dean of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Ulster. His photographs are held in many museum collections across the world.
‘Sectarian Murder’, featured at Photo|Frome, revisits the sites of Sectarian attacks during ‘troubles’ close to where Paul grew up in Belfast. The texts with the images are from newspaper reports at the time and document the murders of innocent civilians, killed for their perceived religion.
ROOK LANE CHAPEL
Fast Forward: Women in Photography
Fast Forward: Women in Photography is a research project concerned with women in photography based at University for the Creative Arts, led by acclaimed photographer Anna Fox. Started in 2014, the project questions the way that the established canons have been formed, promoting and engaging with women and non-binary people in photography across the globe.
‘Putting Ourselves in the Picture‘ is exhibited at Photo|Frome and made in partnership with Autograph, Impressions Gallery, National Galleries of Scotland, Women for Refugee Women and Work Show Grow. The work is designed as a case study and will be inspiring for anyone interested in learning about migrant and refugee lives, women’s lives and about storytelling using photography.
Photo by Leonelle.
ROOK LANE CHAPEL
Lucy Sewill
After approaching two decades of photographing some of our most famous faces, Lucy Sewill came to the realisation that her body of work was still almost exclusively male. As a passionate believer in the power of photography, Lucy had to question whether her work was reflecting the status quo or worse – perpetuating inequality through imbalanced representation.
Lucy’s ‘Visible Women‘ celebrates the power of the image to shape and power opinion. She notes that ‘Women will not be invisible and our stories will be told’. In this exhibition, Lucy draws together leading women from screen and stage in protest at the lack of age and gender equality in a collection of her authentic and intimate portraits.
Lucy has been inspired and supported in this project by the Acting Your Age Campaign created by Nicky Clark. Nicky has in recent years drawn together actors, called upon the Culture Secretary, authored a highly publicised open letter and is backed by 100s of leading actors and public figures of all genders.
ROOK LANE CHAPEL
MPB Student Awards
Photo|Frome is pleased to again announce our Student Awards, supported by MPB – the largest global platform to buy, sell and trade used photo and video gear.
Photo by Ritchie Elder, Runner Up
The MPB Student Awards welcomed projects of all genre and styles of photography, and any photographic processes, that reflect the 2025 theme: inEquality. The awards were open to any student currently enrolled in a UK-based education programme.
MPB is offering a range of valuable prizes:
- First prize is a £500 MPB voucher
- Second prize is a £250 MPB voucher
- A pre-degree winning prize of a £250 MPB voucher
- Two runner-up MPB vouchers of £125 each
ROOK LANE CHAPEL OUTDOORS
Thursday 9 April to Sunday 27 April
ROOK LANE CHAPEL OUTDOOR
Gideon Mendel
Working with both stills and video, Gideon Mendel‘s intimate style of image-making and long-term commitment to socially engaged projects has earned international recognition. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1959, he began photographing in the 1980s, during the final years of apartheid. This experience as a ‘struggle photographer’, documenting the brutality of the South African state’s response to peaceful protest, marked him on some level and for much of his subsequent career his focus has been on responding to the key global issues facing his generation.
‘When I’m 40‘ is a cross-generational initiative with a group of nine and ten year old children in North Devon providing a unique perspective on our global climate emergency from the viewpoint of the generation who will be most affected. In a series of workshops led by the Beaford team, a group of eighteen local children and their parents explored how rising tides may affect places that they know and love during their lifetimes. The children all created their own placards, questioning what their chosen locations might be like in 2050 when they are grown up.
This project has been supported by the Cultural Development Fund, a sum of money awarded to North Devon Council by Arts Council England, on behalf of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.
ROOK LANE CHAPEL OUTDOORS
Sarah Palmer
Sarah Palmer is based in Toronto, Canada. Her work straddles the realm of journalism and fine art, questioning the conventional limits that both of these worlds hold for the viewer and artist alike. She explores pop culture and current events with a focus on the subcultures that these gatherings draw in.
Sarah composes multi-frame exposures in camera, with no manipulation in post. By building layers of stories on the same piece of film, she attempts to make sense of the constructed realities we live in by playing with feelings of surrealness and nostalgia.
‘Wish You Were Here’ explores vacation culture amidst the climate crisis, and how it plays, often unconsciously, into what’s known as last-chance tourism. This is a trend whereby travellers visit destinations that are being irreparably changed by the climate crisis and will eventually vanish altogether. The more tourists who visit these environments, and the more widespread the climate crisis becomes, the more last-chance tourism grows.
Black Swan Arts | 2 Bridge Street, BA11 1BB
10:00 – 16:00 Saturday 5 April to Sunday 27 April
Round Tower, Black Swan Arts
Tim Smith
Canadian photographer Tim Smith has spent 17 years documenting life on the prairies including 15 years photographing the Hutterites; insular Anabaptists who live communally on colonies in Canada and the United States. In addition to long-term documentary work, Tim is a passionate speaker on topics relating to slow journalism, photographing sensitive communities or subjects, mental health in journalism and the heartbreak and joy of being invited into people’s lives.
Tim’s project ‘In The World But Not Of It‘ provides the most comprehensive, contemporary and nuanced view of the Hutterite colonies – delving into complex decisions at the heart of the everyday. His documentation offers a glimpse into the continuously negotiated sites of Hutterite life. Many of the images focus on the youth culture in the colonies, where expressions of rebellion, respect for tradition, and maintenance of strict gender roles all create a sense of dual resistance – at once against the pressures of the outside world and against tradition.
Round Tower, Black Swan Arts
Evgeniya Strygina
Evgeniya Strygina is a London-based artist who specialises in landscape and architecture photography as she captures urban and natural environments to highlight their relation to and their autonomy from human beings. However, in ‘Home from Home’, Evgeniya tells the stories of people who were forced to leave their homes when the war in Ukraine began in February 2022. The stories presented in the project demonstrate the complexity and reveal the personal toll of geopolitical tensions, as families are torn apart and lives are uprooted – both for Ukrainians and Russians. Many ended up in the UK. Whether it is temporary or permanent is uncertain, but they are all trying to make this place their new home.
The Whittox Gallery @ RISE | Whittox Lane, Frome, BA11 3BY
10:00 – 16:00 Saturday 5 April to Sunday 27 April (closed Mondays)
THE WHITTOX GALLERY
Sujata Setia
Sujata Setia is an Indian born – British photographer. In 2009, she completed a masters in International Relations from King’s College London. Sujata has a background in journalism that informs her research based socially engaged practice. She combines traditional artistic interventions and photography to call attention to the boundary of cultural imperialism, a boundary marked not by the social exile of the ‘other’, but by the ordinary, the ever-present yet trivialised exile formed by prejudices, procedures and activities so fundamental as to not even be noticed.
In 2024, Sujata received the Culture King’s grant to translate academic research on the role of workplace for the Embroidery Women Artisans in Kashmir into a lens-based interdisciplinary work. She is the recipient of LensCulture Critics Choice Award 2024, Sony World Photography Award Creative Category Winner 2024, Prix Pictet Nominee 2023, POCC Art Fund recipient 2023, BJP Female in Focus winner 2022, Photographer of the Year – Tokyo International Foto Awards 2021, Open Award Gold winner – Association of Photographers 2021, Portrait Award Winner at The Independent Photographer and The India Photo Fest 2021.
Sujata’s series ‘A Thousand Cuts’ studies the patterns of domestic abuse through personal narratives of survivors, who receive the dignity of taking centre stage in this project.
THE WHITTOX GALLERY
Valentina Sinis
Valentina Sinis is a documentary photographer who focuses on unique and unusual stories, often capturing people and communities living on the edges of society. Her work shows a strong connection with her subjects, with a special focus on women, especially in countries where their rights are limited. Valentina’s photographs offer a thoughtful and gentle look into hidden details and everyday moments that are often overlooked or exaggerated.Her work has been featured in major publications such as The Guardian, Internazionale, and La Repubblica. Her photographs have been displayed in exhibitions in Europe and China. She has received several awards, including being named one of the 6X6 Europe Talents by World Press Photo in 2019. Valentina won the Female in Focus award in 2020 and received the Award of Excellence for Issue Reporting Picture Story in the POY 2021 competition.
‘Were Afghan Women To Unveil Their Tales’ is a project that gives a close and respectful look into Afghan women’s lives, showing what they go through in a difficult reality. Since the Taliban took control again, over seventy rules have been made to restrict women’s access to education, work, healthcare, and freedom to move. These limits affect women everywhere, from public spaces to their own homes, where they face daily restrictions on movement, opportunities, and even small decisions. Yet, Afghan women continue to show incredible strength. Their daily choices – like leaving home, running businesses, or organizing in their communities – are brave acts.
Frome Museum | North Parade, Frome, BA11 1AT
11:00 – 15:00 Saturday 5 April to Saturday 26 April (closed Mondays & Sundays – except Sunday 6 April [Frome Independent market day])
[This exhibition is on before and after Photo|Frome – please check frome-museum.org for dates]FROME MUSEUM
Trinity – The Great Clearance, 1962-1968
Station Gallery | Station Approach, Frome, BA11 1RE
10:00 – 16:00 Saturday 5 April to Sunday 27 April
STATION GALLERY
Open Call Finalists
New for Photo|Frome 2025 is our Open Call exhibition offering photographers the opportunity to explore their thoughts and ideas on the festival’s inEquality theme.
THE WINNERS AND HONOURABLE MENTIONS ARE HERE
Successful entries received from across the world, transcending borders, photographic approach, and technical interpretations result in a distinctly varied and thought provoking exhibition that forms a worthy new addition to the festival line-up.
Silk Mill Studios and Gallery | Merchants Barton, Frome, BA11 1PT
10:00 – 16:00 Tuesday 15 April to Tuesday 29 April
SILK MILL STUDIOS AND GALLERY
Boomsatsuma BA Students
Students from the Photography & Print BA at Boomsatsuma, Bristol will exhibit a selection of pieces of work co-curated by Amin Yousefi (Photo|Frome’s 2023 student awards winner). This exhibition represents varied responses looking to interrogate the festival’s theme of inEquality.
Frome Library | Justice Lane, Frome, BA11 1BE
9:00 – 17:00 Saturday 5 April to Saturday 26 April (closed Sundays)
FROME LIBRARY
Falmouth BA Students
InProgress: Serving as an evocative and thought-provoking group exhibition, InProgress showcases diverse perspectives on InEquality by emerging student photographers on the BA Commercial Photography programme at The Institute of Photography, Falmouth University.
Through an array of methods and approaches, these works challenge us to confront the pervasive disparities that shape our world—whether they manifest in economic status, race, gender, access to education, environmental impact, or the countless other forms of imbalance that define our contemporary lives. Inequality is not merely a statistic or a distant problem; it is personal, local, global, and deeply human. Each work serves as a lens through which we can explore the ways inequity is experienced, perpetuated, resisted, and reimagined.
FROME LIBRARY
Frome College Students
Students from Frome College exhibit a varied selection of images and photographic process on the festival’s inEquality theme.
Roseberry Road Studios | 25, 28 Roseberry Rd, Bath, BA2 3DX
11:00 – 17:00 Thursday 10 April to Sunday 27 April (closed Monday – Wednesday each week).
ROSEBERRY ROAD STUDIOS
inEquality Open Call
Photo|Frome is delighted to be collaborating with Roseberry Road Studios, Bath, in inviting photographers to submit work exploring the theme of INEQUALITY. Selected pieces will be showcased in a thought-provoking exhibition at our gallery.
Entries will be selected by Homer Sykes (Photographer), Toufic Beyhum (Photographer) and Calum Mackenzie (Creative Director at Roseberry Road Studios).
Frome Library | Justice Lane, Frome, BA11 1BE
OUTDOORS, Saturday 5 April to Saturday 26 April
FROME LIBRARY
Joanne Coates
Joanne Coates, a working-class visual artist based in the North East of England, uses photography to explore rurality, hidden histories, and income-based inequalities. Educated in working-class communities before attending London College of Communication (BA Hons Photography), Joanne values community engagement as central to her practice.
As a farm labourer focused on nature-friendly methods, her work reflects a strong connection to place and memory. Her art spans photography, installations, and audio, tackling issues of power, identity, wealth, and poverty. Joanne was selected as the 2024 Election Artist by the UK Parliament’s Speaker’s Committee and received the Baltic Vasseur Arts Award in 2023 for work on housing, climate, and rural life. She was also recently longlisted for the 2024 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize and the 2023 Prix Pictet.
Joanne has spent years interrogating the British class system and scraping aside myths that surround idyllic versions of rural life. In the series The Lie of the Land, she unravels the social histories of the countryside in the North East of England by collaborating with rural working class women in agriculture.
River House Cafe Gallery | Black Swan Arts, 2 Bridge Street, Frome, BA11 1BB
9:00 – 17:00 Saturday 5 April to Sunday 27 April (10:00 – 16:00 Sundays)
RIVER HOUSE CAFE
Water Aid
Around 700 million people (that’s almost 1 in 10) in the world do not have access to a reliable source of safe clean water. It means they have no choice but to collect dirty water for drinking, cooking & cleaning. It often means a long walk to a river or stream to collect water – work usually carried out by women and girls who often, as a result miss out on schooling. The lack of clean water can lead to the spread of diseases like cholera. It holds back whole communities.
Water Aid believes access to reliable, safe, clean water, sanitation and hygiene is a human right and saves lives.
Photo: 8-year-old Akshana belongs to a gypsy community who were affected by unprecedented floods in Pakistan. She has to walk nearly 1500 ft multiples times a day to get clean drinking water.
Projects Store & Kitchen Gallery | 7 The Bridge, Frome, BA11 1AR
8:30 – 16:00 Saturday 5 April to Sunday 27 April (9:30 – 15:30 Sundays)
PROJECTS STORE & KITCHEN GALLERY
Empowerment
Projects is staging an exhibition of photos of disempowered communities and refugees from a Frome-based photo collector
The image here is of Kenyah & Penan people (Sarawak, Borneo) mounting a blockade on one of the logging roads in protest at their forest being chopped down by logging companies (under licence from the Malaysian Government).
La Strada Cafe Gallery | 13 Cheap St, Frome, BA11 1BN
8:30 – 18:00 Saturday 5 April to Saturday 26 April (closed Sundays)
Frome Wessex Photographic
LA STRADA CAFE GALLERY
Frome Wessex Photographic, one of the region’s most successful and longstanding camera groups, offers its members’ interpretation of the festival’s ‘inEquality’ theme.
Outdoor, Victoria Park | Weymouth Road, Frome, BA11 1HJ
Saturday 5 April to Sunday 27 April
OUTDOOR
Faces of Frome
Faces of Frome is an ongoing project documenting the diversity of the people of Frome in partnership with The Frome Independent market.
Permanent residents and those visiting this vibrant community are invited to take part. The photographs form part of a living archive, added to with each edition of Photo|Frome festival, building a unique record of the community. Photographs were taken by BA students from Boomsatsuma, Bristol. Students of Frome College assist by managing the participants.
Outdoor, River Walk | Welshmill, Frome, BA11 2LA
Saturday 5 April to Sunday 27 April
OUTDOOR
Gideon Mendel & Sarah Palmer
Unfortunately, the River Walk outdoor exhibition was vandalised during the festival’s opening weekend.
BOTH EXHIBITIONS HAVE SINCE BEEN REINSTATED AT ROOK LANE CHAPEL COURTYARD. THE SHOW GOES ON!