About Us
Ph: The Photography Research Network was established in 2010 as a forum for research PhD students working in the field of photography. The diverse interests of the members were reflected and developed in wide-ranging discussions held at The Photographers’ Gallery in London. Members created an opportunity to share their current research and projects in a friendly and supportive atmosphere of intellectual rigour.
The group was awarded an AHRC Student-led Initiatives Grant (Beyond Text Programme, 2010-2011) which facilitated the development of the project Either/And in collaboration with The National Media Museum. This project aimed to create a dialogue around critical and creative issues shaping histories of photography. A dedicated website hosting commissioned material including essays, interviews, images and films, provided a starting point for invited responses from leading thinkers as well as public online discussion. This inclusive approach demonstrates the conviction which unites the activity of Ph as a group: that photography can provide a point of contact between different disciplines, discourses and timeframes and that, by opening a dialogue between them, we might better understand the positions it occupies in society and culture.
The Ph Network meetings and discussions from 2010-2015, and the project Either/And, culminated in the publication of a book, Photography Reframed: New Visions in Contemporary Photographic Culture. Published by Bloomsbury in 2018, it was edited by founder members Benedict Burbridge and Annabella Pollen. Currently, the second iteration of the Ph Network (2015 - ) is led by a core membership that is more actively concerned with critical practice, including curating and education, whilst still driven by the rigorous scholarship that characterised the focus of the original group.
In 2018 the Ph Network proposed an exhibition with the working title Photographic Experience of Space. This was to bring together a collection of text-based and visual work, by artists and researchers from the group, to form a dialogue for the visual to meet the spatial in a critical and creative interaction. Following further discussions, and feedback from public facing events, the project has developed into Bridging the Distance, which opened at the Four Corners gallery in East London in June 2021.
Bridging the Distance responds to the diversity of viewpoints found across the membership of the group as a microcosm of a wider diversity. This approach aims to collapse traditional hierarchies and initiates a levelling of the distinctions between theory and practice. It suggests the power and immediacy of photography to bridge the distances between perspectives. The works will manifest these ideas through studies that span notions of place and interactions, including between environment, portraiture, surveillance and resistance.
The collaborative spirit of the Ph Network is amplified by a proposed collaboration with the iconic Four Corners in East London, a space for radical filmmaking and photography for half a century. Planned for 2020 (recognising the 10th anniversary of the Ph Network) there was much postponement due to the global Covid pandemic. An exhibition was eventually hosted in the gallery at Four Corners: 23rd June to 3rd July 2021. This included visual, audio-visual and text works from several Ph members, dispersed across countries due to Covid, our title gained further resonance as we strived, online, to deliver the project. An archives workshop for young people and a public discussion had to be cancelled, however, two limited public previews were held and the exhibition will be revisited online and in the future.
We created the exhibition space for an open dialogue on photography to invite a bridging of distances. Contributors include experienced, exhibiting practitioners, curators, educators and activists. We hope to work with everyone that we can reach through future collaboration with individuals and other organisations.
Members past and present also continue to pursue individual projects in curating, writing, consulting, making and educating.
With special thanks to Alexandra Tommasini who contributed to the development of The Photographic Experience of Space and Bridging the Distance.
Ph: The Photography Research Network was established and developed by Ben Burbridge and Olga Smith. It is now directed by Andreia Alves de Oliveira, Liz J Drew, Sukey Parnell Johnson, Annalisa Sonzogni, Gil Pasternak and Alexandra Tommasini.
Directors:
2016 to present: Andreia Alves de Oliveira, Liz J Drew, Sukey Parnell Johnson, Annalisa Sonzogni, Gil Pasternak and Alexandra Tommasini.
Previous Directors:
2013-2016 Juliet Baillie, Gil Pasternak and Annebella Pollen
Founders:
2010-2013 Ben Burbridge and Olga Smith