Open Eye Gallery Welcomes New Curator: Mariama Attah
This week Open Eye Gallery welcomes Mariama Attah as the organisation’s new curator. Mariama is a photography curator, editor and writer with a particular interest in the power of photography to represent visual culture. Working with the team and community partners, she will lead the Liverpool photography gallery’s programme as it moves more towards embracing co-authorship and socially engaged practice: working with people to push for social change. She will also teach on an FdA course based at UCEN Manchester: Contemporary Photographic Practices, and will be co-writing the Open Eye Photography BA programme that launches September 2021.
Mariama was previously Assistant Editor of Foam Magazine. Before this, she was Curator at Photoworks, where she was responsible for developing and curating exhibition programs and events, including Brighton Photo Biennial, as well as commissioning and editing Photoworks Annual.
Mariama Attah, Curator at Open Eye Gallery said:
“I am thrilled to be joining the team at Open Eye Gallery. Their dedication to socially engaged practice is a reminder that photography and visual arts have the power to advocate for, and shape change at many levels in society.”
Mariama Attah joins Open Eye Gallery following a period focusing socially engaged photography. Bringing different voices, photographers and communities together, the gallery establishes projects in which the collaborative process is just as important as the final product.
Sarah Fisher, Director at Open Eye Gallery said:
“Over the past few years, we’ve been working to embed socially engaged processes across everything we do, exploring photography’s capacity to act as a visual language that can inspire, empower, and accelerate social causes. We’re thrilled to have found someone as excited about this potential for photography as we are, and are looking forward to all the ways that Mariama’s thinking will enrich the work we do.”
Andrew Moseley, Course Leader FdA Contemporary Photographic Practices at UCEN Manchester, said:
“This unique collaboration between Open Eye Gallery and UCEN Manchester is the result of a year-long conversation between myself and Executive Director Sarah Fisher. The appointment of Mariama Attah as curator will allow us to refine our new cross industry/education partnership to reimagine what a BA programme can offer. Young people from a wider demographic are interacting with photography in new exciting ways, shifting from text to images to discover the world, Mariama is perfectly placed in this appointment to encourage and guide our students to become the next generation of photographers.”
Open Eye Gallery produces exhibitions, long-term collaborative projects, publications, festivals, and university courses — locally and worldwide. It welcomes over 85,000 visitors to it’s Liverpool waterfront gallery every year, over 200,000 to projects in other venues, and many more to its online spaces. In September, it launches Contemporary Photographic Practices, a new FdA course in partnership with UCEN Manchester: enrolment is open.
