A Spotlight On… The zine

We’re pleased to share the first annual Socially Engaged Photography Network publication, ‘A Spotlight On’. This collection of conversations explore the landscape of social practice in photography.

The publication shares eight interviews and two critical essays from some of the UK’s leading and emerging socially engaged practitioners. The conversations cover a range of topics including (but not limited to), the multiple roles of practitioners and their different collaborative approaches, how practitioners’ own lived experience directs and affects how they work with others, the question of who is the work for and how does this affect process vs product. We hope you find the conversations an intriguing spotlight on socially engaged practice and the many different approaches to this work.

More information about the Socially Engaged Photography Network:

Working with organisations, photographers, community groups, academics and curators from across the country, we are building a new network to discuss and accelerate the practice of socially engaged photography. In the spirit of social practice, the network is shaped collaboratively by its users. We have over 380 members and 20 organisational partners supporting the development of the network to date. Thanks go to SEPN partners Heart of Glass for the co-commissioning of some of the interviews included in this publication.

When referring to the term socially engaged pho- tography, we mean activities or projects where photographers and communities/ individuals come together to co-author or co-produce visual representations of the world around us. The process behind the work produced is often as important as the final photographic work, and projects are often reliant on collaboration and discussion. The work often reflects multiple voices about a particular social, political, eco- nomical or environmental issue, rather than that of a single artistic voice.