Exhibitions

Shifting Horizons @ Digital Window Gallery

27 March - 31 March 2024

PLATFORM: ISSUE 6

26 March 2024

Events

Saturday Town: Launch Event

10 April 2024

Exhibitions

Coming Soon: Saturday Town

11 April - 18 May 2024

Past Events

PLATFORM: ZINE LAUNCH EVENT

21 March 2024

Home. Ukrainian Photography, UK Words: Tour

4 March - 28 February 2025

Exhibitions

Home: Ukrainian Photography, UK Words @ New Adelphi

4 March - 8 March 2024

Past Events

CREATIVE SOCIAL: IN THE ABSENCE OF FORMAL GROUND

2 March 2024

Exhibitions

We Feed The UK @ Exterior Walls

8 February - 31 March 2024

Past Events

Contrail Cirrus: the impact of aviation on climate change

7 March 2024

Exhibitions

Tree Story @ Liverpool ONE

16 February 2024

Open Source #27: Saffron Lily – In The Absence of Formal Ground @ Digital Window Gallery

6 February - 31 March 2024

Past Events

Contemporary Photography from Ukraine: Symposium @University of Salford

4 March - 5 March 2024

Past Events

Is Anybody Listening? Symposium: Commissioning and Collecting Socially Engaged Photography

29 February 2024

Past Events

Different approaches: Artists working with scientists

15 February 2024

Events

LOOK Climate Lab 2024: All Events

18 January 2024

Exhibitions

Diesel & Dust @ Digital Window Gallery

18 January - 31 March 2024

Events

Tree Walks Of Sefton Park with Andrea Ku

21 January 2024

Past Events

Artists Remake the World by Vid Simoniti: Book Launch

31 January 2024

Past Events

Shift Liverpool Open Meeting

6 February 2024

Past Events

We Feed The UK Launch and LOOK Climate Lab 2024 Celebration

8 February 2024

Past Events

Cyanotype workshop with Melanie King

17 February 2024

Past Events

End of Empire: artist talk and discussion

22 February 2024

Past Events

Book Launch: What The Mine Gives, The Mine Takes

24 February 2024

Past Events

Local ecology in the post-industrial era: open discussion

14 March 2024

Past Events

Waterlands: creative writing workshop

23 March 2024

Past Events

Plant a seed. Seed sow and in conversation with Plot2Plate

16 March 2024

Past Events

Erosion: panel discussion

9 March 2024

Past Events

Waterlands: an evening of poetry and photographs

23 March 2024

Events

Force For Nature Exhibition

27 March - 28 March 2024

Voices of Nature: Interactive Performances

28 March 2024

Past Events

Sum of All Parts: Symposium

27 February 2024

Exhibitions Main Exhibition

LOOK Climate Lab 2024

18 January - 31 March 2024

Past Events

MA Socially engaged photography Open Day event

1 February 2023

Past Events

Tish: Special screening and Q&A

13 December 2023

Past Events

Book Launch: A Look At A New Perspective

23 November 2023

Events

Community workshops @ Ellesmere Port Library

6 November - 5 February 2024

Past Events

Book Launch: ‘544m’ By Kevin Crooks

30 November 2023

Past Exhibitions

Bernice Mulenga @ Open Eye Gallery Atrium Space

17 November - 17 December 2023

Past Events

Bernice Mulenga: Artist Talk

18 November 2023

Past Exhibitions

Local Roots @ The Atkinson

14 October 2023

Exhibitions

Community @ Ellesmere Port Library

26 October - 11 April 2024

Past Events

Critique Surgery for Socially Engaged Photographers

6 November 2023

Past Events

Deeds Not Words: panel discussion

12 October 2023

Past Exhibitions

Deeds Not Words @ Atrium Space

3 October - 22 October 2023

Ode To Our Space @ Digital Window Gallery

29 September - 23 December 2023

A Look At A New Perspective @ Digital Window Gallery

29 September - 23 December 2023

Past Events

Book Launch: Crow Dark Dawn

19 October 2023

Past Events

Exhibition Launch: A Place of Our Own

28 September 2023

Reflections

12 September - 22 December 2023

Close
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Hanane in her kitchen, for the 'Heart and Parcel' cookbook, 2019
Frances and Mia, from 'The Mothers', 2013
Asha, commission by MIF creative, 2015

A Spotlight On… Rebecca Lupton

Open Eye Gallery’s interviewer-in-residence, Sara Sarf speaks with Rebecca Lupton – Photographer, Socially Engaged artist and founder of The Mothers and The Mothers: Life in Lockdown.

How did you get into photography?

I did a foundation course in Art and Design at Manchester Metropolitan University and I really enjoyed the photography side of it – working in the dark rooms and being quite playful with film. I decided to carry on at Manchester Met and do a photography degree there. While I was doing the degree, I started assisting local photographers in Manchester who were doing fashion and editorial type shoots.

I then worked in a studio, which I absolutely hated. I learned loads from working in this environment, as there were certain restrictions that I had to work within.

When I left the studio job, I was thinking of going back to assisting and after sending out a few emails to photographers, one of the photographers pointed out that my work is good enough and I should go and work on my own. He gave me the kick that I needed to become a freelance photographer. I went out on my own, and didn’t really know what to do. I had some mentoring from a photographer called Len Grant, who was working on the kind of jobs that I wanted to do – more social documentary, illustrating stories, meeting real people and getting out and about. He helped me through those first years. I also did a bit of volunteering at Redeye (the photography network) at that time, I was quite heavily involved with them for about three years.

So how did you become a freelancer? And how did you start out your projects?

My first job was with the Guardian, and it was my dream job, but I also learned as well that in freelance work, you can’t take anything for granted. I started to realise that it was really important to have my own projects going on at the same time to keep up momentum of work and my ideas going.

I learned quite quickly that if you create your own work that you want to be commissioned for, then those commissions will come to you eventually. I started creating projects that were the kind of work that I didn’t know how to get commissioned to do – I just went out to meet people and asked if they’d be part of my project. The first project I did was in Levenshulme in Manchester, where I photographed independent business owners in a really multicultural area. It’s a unique place in the way that every single shop is owned by somebody from a different background and given nationality, and I wanted to show the diversity of Levenshulme. It was later featured as part of the Levenshulme Festival, a small local art festival, where lots of people saw those pictures and as a result I was then commissioned to do quite a lot of work, similar to that project.

Tell me about ‘The Mothers’ project? I saw it on Instagram and on your website and really loved seeing those pictures.

Soon after that I started a project called The Mothers on the advice of visual artist, Mishka Henner, who said to me, at one point ‘I think the best work comes from a place where the photographer is really involved in it’. And at that point, when I was trying to think of a new project I was thinking I’m just a mum, that is all I do at the moment. So, I started The Mothers when I was pregnant with my second daughter and I have been running it for nearly 10 years now with around 220 women featured on the site.

Originally I would go and photograph them in their house, and then either I would interview them or they would answer the same questions set for everybody – exploring the theme of motherhood and what we all think it’s meant to be and the actual reality of it.

Did you manage to work during COVID? How did that change your project?

Since COVID, I had to alter the project as I have my children at home and we weren’t allowed in people’s houses anymore. Inspired by Open Eye Gallery’s ‘Crossing Sectors’ programme I shifted The Mothers into a socially engaged project, in which I teach women how to take photographs in their own homes. Those taking part in the project are the ones creating the work. The Mothers: Life in Lockdown project started with an open call. We created groups where we would meet on zoom and I would set tasks and introduce them to the work of other artists. It was also an opportunity to chat about life, how creativity, motherhood and the pandemic was quite difficult, how we could overcome that and then just generally encouraging and supporting each other. They were also invited to contribute to a blog, which gave them a space to reflect on how it is being a mum in lockdown.

I wanted to do it where there were a few different ways that the mothers could get involved and it’s keeping the project very fluid. There was the blog and the project where people join more in depth and I would be guiding them as a mentor. I also created a hashtag on Instagram #motherslifeinlockdown, so women would be able to join in the project in a more easy and free setting.

The plan with it eventually is to make a book or magazine or some sort of exhibition but it’s so hard to know where we’ll be in a few months’ time.

So ‘The Mothers’ project evolved and shifted during the pandemic which transformed your way of working with people. Would you call it socially engaged practice?

The idea of the project was always about giving women a voice and making them more seen. Making it into a participatory project aligned perfectly with the initial kind of motivations of starting the project.

It’s a pilot project – I’ve never done anything like this before, so I want to see what works and what doesn’t work, and then make decisions based on my findings in the future. I’ve actually been commissioned to do my first job based on this pilot. I’m currently running a project on zoom with a group of new mums in Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire, where we’re exploring motherhood and photography within the lockdown situation.

It’s been really interesting how the Crossing Sectors programme helped adapt this project that I had and was really stuck with. It helped me to develop it and showed me that there’s this whole world of working (socially engaged, participatory photography) that I wasn’t aware of. While I have always had projects that have been working with organisations and groups of people to create artwork related to those people themselves, most often it’s been me making the artwork. And it was interesting in the ‘Crossing Sectors’ programme to hear about the differentiation between socially engaged photography and participatory photography. What I’ve done previously are projects in which I would get to know people and meet them in their place of work where I interviewed and photographed them. I would count these as socially engaged practice, but I don’t think I’d have known that it had a title before. I never knew how to categorise that kind of work. I would have always said it was social documentary photography, it was probably how I would have described it. Whereas this project that I’ve recently started is almost entirely participatory and socially engaged. I’ve hardly taken any photographs; it’s all been the people that I’ve been mentoring. I’ve been curating it and showing them different ways to present or helping them with developing ideas and their own practice.

Is this how you prefer to work in the future? Creating projects that allow more participation and interaction?

Working with people in this way, I think it allows me to be more creative. It’s so interesting to see how the way you engage with people and the way you interact and encourage them brings out the best in them, the parts of them that they didn’t even know existed. I’m helping people and observing what they do, however, ultimately, they’re in total control of the work that they do. It feels very collaborative – we’re all involved and together we are creating something new. But it’s recognising that I can use my knowledge, and my experience to get the best out of them in this situation and to get them to do amazing things, which is really rewarding.

Through the ‘Crossing Sectors’ programme I also realised that while I felt that I don’t fit in into the typical photography world, I do feel that I fit in at the socially engaged art world. I love working with people and being surrounded by people and in a kind of lone wolf photographer world that can be quite difficult to navigate.

 

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