Photo50

Photo50 is London Art Fair’s annual exhibition of contemporary photography, providing a critical forum for examining some of the most distinguishing elements of current photographic practice. Guest curated each year, it highlights a timely theme in current photography and adds a space and context to the photography presented by galleries at the Fair. Secure your tickets today and join us at the Business Design Centre January 17-21 to discover Photo50 2024.

The Photo50 2024 exhibition will be announced autumn 2023. Subscribe to our mailing list to be notified when Photo50 2024 is announced.

PHOTO 50 2023: BEAUTIFUL EXPERIMENTS

London Art Fair 2020, PHOTO50
London Art Fair 2020, PHOTO50

2023 PHOTO50: BEAUTIFUL EXPERIMENTS

London Art Fair Photo50 2023 theme was Beautiful Experiments, curated by Pelumi Odubanjo and Katy Barron.

The 2023 edition of Photo50 brought together the work of a group of multigenerational women and non-binary photographers whose practice engages with their diasporic heritage, and through their lens explores domestic life and the home as not only a physical place but also a space of memory and generational exchange.

The title is taken from the 2019 book Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments: Intimate Histories of Riotous Black Girls, Troublesome Women, and Queer Radicals by the American writer Saidiya Hartmann, who writes about the lives of Black women in the US through a lens of fiction, using photographs from the archive and taking a sensory approach to narrating such histories.

The majority of selected artist are based in the UK, but they have a range of diasporic heritages and have made work that reflects their particular histories and ideas around home.

Bernice Mulenga Friends on Film
Bernice Mulenga, Orpheus Jay, 2021
The Body Remembers, This England (#4)2020, Heather Agyepong(Commissioned by The Hyman Collection)
Heather Agyepong, The Body Remembers, 2020. Courtesy of The Hyman Collection
Joy Gregory, Butter Dish From Home, 2018
Joy Gregory, Butter Dish From Home, 2018
Adaeze Ihebom, The Artist's Room, 2022
Adaeze Ihebom, The Artist's Room, 2022

2023 EXHIBITING ARTISTS

Heather Agyepong | Joy Gregory | Adaeze Ihebom | Marcia Michael | Bernice Mulenga | Sofia Yala | Marlene Smith | Rubee Samuel | Maxine Walker | Adama Jalloh | Eileen Perrier

“We tried to find a way to allow the photographers space to consider their ideas and share them with us. Some of these voices have not been heard and we feel that they deserve a platform. The exhibition is an opportunity for them to experiment with their ideas without constraints. The beauty in these works is both visual but also emotional as they share intimate domestic or interior moments with the viewer.” 

– Pelumi Odubanjo and Katy Barron

MEET THE CURATORS

Katy Barron and Pelumi Mulenga portrait Credit Bernice Mulenga
Katy Barron and Pelumi Mulenga. Courtesy of Bernice Mulenga

Pelumi Odubanjo is a curator, researcher, and writer based in London. Her interests in contemporary art are cross-disciplinary, although her understanding is filtered through the lens of Photography which informs both her work as a curator and researcher. Pelumi works with artists, archives, and cultural artefacts to create and explore dialogues across a global African diaspora to disentangle our understanding of archival practice. Pelumi has a BA from Newcastle University in Fine Art, and an MA from Goldsmith’s, University of London in Contemporary Art Theory. She is currently a PhD candidate in History of Art at the University of Glasgow.

Her writing on contemporary photography, art, and culture has appeared in Magnum Photos, New Contemporaries, Artillery Magazine, Photoworks, and Photo Fringe amongst others. Pelumi currently works as an Curatorial Assistant at the Serpentine Galleries, and has curated at festivals and institutions such as Photo Oxford, 2021, the Tate Exchange at Tate Modern, 2020, Brighton Photo Fringe, 2020, and the Black Cultural Archives, 2020.

 

Katy Barron is a photography curator, mentor and advisor based in London. She has worked within the field of photography for the past 20 years, focusing on contemporary and twentieth century artists. Katy has undertaken a myriad of roles within the field – from Senior Director at Michael Hoppen Gallery to Chair of the Board of Photofusion. She currently works for the Maud Sulter Estate in Glasgow and is helping other women artists with issues around their archives, estates and legacies. Katy has a BA from the Courtauld Institute of Art and an M. Litt in the History of Art from Oxford University. She has curated numerous photographic exhibitions in the UK and abroad, most recently at Four Corners in Bethnal Green, St John’s College, Oxford as a part of the Photo Oxford festival and at Photofusion, Brixton.

 

Photography Focus Day

London Art Fair’s Photography Focus Day (Friday 20 January 2023) featured a day of Talks and Tours dedicated to the examination and discussion of some of the most innovative and distinctive elements of contemporary photographic practice.

For full details of London Art Fair’s 2023 Talks Programme click here.

Photography Focus day is set to take place on Friday 19 January 2024. The Programme will be announced in the Autumn. 

Photo50 Partners

Explore More

GALLERIES

Each year, galleries at London Art Fair showcase the very best Modern and Contemporary Art, from established names to today’s leading artists. Discover the 2023 Galleries.

ENCOUNTERS

Encounters is a curated showcase of the freshest contemporary art from across the globe, featuring large-scale installations, solo shows and thematic group displays.

PLATFORM

Platform is a guest-curated presentation that brings together well-known, overlooked and emerging artists into conversation around a single, unifying theme.

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