Installations 2025
Rook Lane Chapel
One of Photo|Frome’s principal installations featured 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 explored 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) was shown alongside other Ken Loach film.
Lucy Sewill‘s ‘Visible Women‘ was also featured at Rook Lane, as was the work of Shams Radwan, a finalist in the Open Call, and the winners of the MPB Student Awards.
Rook Lane Chapel – MPB Student Awards
Rook Lane Chapel – Outdoors
Gideon Mendel‘s ‘When I’m 40‘, and Sarah Palmer’s ‘Wish You Were Here’ were exhibited outdoors at Rook Lane Chapel. Originally installed along the river side at Welshmill, that exhibition was vandalised and quickly relocated.
Original river side installation
Re-installation at Rook Lane Chapel
Station Gallery – Open Call
New for Photo|Frome 2025 was our Open Call exhibition offering photographers the opportunity to explore their thoughts and ideas on the festival’s inEquality theme. Successful entries received from across the world, transcending borders, photographic approach, and technical interpretations result in a distinctly varied and thought provoking exhibition.
The Whittox Gallery – Sujata Setia & Valentina Sinis
Sujata Setia is an Indian born – British photographer and a survivor of child sexual abuse and domestic violence. ‘Otherness’ is at the core of her lived experience and through that, her photographic practice. Her 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
Valentina Sinis is a documentary photographer who focuses on unique and unusual stories, often capturing people and communities living on the edges of society. ‘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.
Black Swan Arts – Evgeniya Strygina & Tim Smith
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.
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. His 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.
Silk Mill – Boomsatsuma
Students from the Photography & Print BA at Boomsatsuma, Bristol exhibited 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.
Silk Mill – These Poor Creatures
As the only UK photography festival located beyond a major town or city, Photo|Frome is the apposite forum to explore how rural inequality is being explored in contemporary photography. Photographers Tessa Bunney, Jennifer Forward-Hayter, Kirsty Mackay, Naomi Wood, Denise Felkin, Seren Metcalfe, Jermaine Francis, and Andy Thatcher explored the representation of rural communities and experiences, in engaging discussions around the relationship between photography and the countryside, led by moderators Jesse Alexander and Phil Hill.
Frome Library – Outdoors
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. 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.
Victoria Park – 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. These 2023 Photographs were taken by BA students from Boomsatsuma, Bristol. Students of Frome College assist by managing the participants.
Frome Heritage Museum – ‘Trinity‘
Roseberry Road Studios
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 were showcased in a thought-provoking exhibition.
Frome Library – Open Book Call Exhibition
Building on the success of the 2023 edition of Photo|Frome, photographers and publishers were invited to submit photobooks and zines for exhibition at the festival and a chance to win the 2025 Open Photobook award.
Frome Library – Falmouth University
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.
Frome Library – Frome College
Students from Frome College exhibit a varied selection of images and photographic process on the festival’s inEquality theme.
Cafe La Strada – Frome Wessex Photographic
Frome Wessex Photographic, one of the region’s most successful and longstanding camera groups, offers its members’ interpretation of the festival’s ‘inEquality’ theme.
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.
Projects Cafe – Empowerment
Empowerment. Projects staged an exhibition of photos of disempowered communities and refugees from a Frome-based photo collector
