20th Annual Exhibition

This is the 21st year of LIP’s existence and the 20th year that an annual exhibition has been held. The entry criteria are similar to previous years, you must be an member of LIP and the work must not have been exhibited with LIP before but apart from this you are free to express yourself as you wish (please see the entry form for a complete list of entry criteria & guidance). The selectors would tend to favour a series of prints above single photograph but this is the only guidance in terms of style that we give.

To celebrate this 20th year of the exhibition and 21st year of LIP we will also be producing a book featuring at least one photograph from each of the members who are successful in having prints accepted to this year's exhibition. This book will be available online to buy during the exhibition (more details will be provided nearer the time).

The space that we have to exhibit our prints is limited to about 125 prints, in previous years the number of prints submitted averages around 350 so the standard is always very high, for those who do succeed in having prints displayed it is a very rewarding experience, for those who are unlucky not to have any prints accepted there is always the knowledge that selection is a very subjective process and so please not be disheartened, do come to the exhibition and see if you agree with our selectors choices.

As exhibition organisers we go to great lengths to make sure that the selection process is fair and impartial. To ensure this is the case we ask established members of the photographic community who are not part of LIP to make the selection, this is done in a manner so that at no point does any selector know whose prints they are viewing. The rest of the work in putting together the exhibition is from volunteers and we are very grateful for all those who are able to give up time to assist. A call will be made for volunteers in September.

We are also very conscious that for some members this may be your first exhibition so please do feel free to ask for guidance and assistance in printing, mounting and framing etc

Lastly we would like to wish all members the best of luck and hope to see you all for a glass of wine at the private viewing on the 19th October.

John Stead (Tel: 07971.460.788) & Avril Harris (07990 976 390)
Email: exhibitions@londonphotography.org.uk

Selectors

We are very fortunate this year to have the following two selectors:

Clare Grafik is a curator at The Photographers' Gallery, London where she has been working since 2003. She has recently worked on exhibitions with David Brittain 'Found, Shared: The Magazine Photowork', with David Hurn on a retrospective of Keith Arnatt's photography, and with photographers Taryn Simon and Antoine d'Agata on solo exhibitions. Catalogue/exhibition projects include Cuny Janssen Finding Thoughts, Zineb Sedira Saphir and Keith Arnatt I'm a Real Photographer and she has written for magazines including Next Level, Art on Paper, and is a contributing editor to Contemporary Magazine. She is currently working on a history of The Photographers' Gallery book with art historian Helen James as the Gallery prepares to embark on its move from Great Newport Street into Soho. 

Paul Hill is a photographer, journalist, author and teacher.

Born in 1941 in Ludlow, Shropshire, Paul Hill worked as a newspaper reporter from the late 1950s until he became a freelance photographer in 1965. As a photojournalist he worked for the Birmingham Post & Mail, The Guardian, The Observer, The Telegraph Magazine, and the BBC, amongst others.

He became a full-time lecturer in photography at Trent Polytechnic, Nottingham in 1974 where he was later appointed head of the Creative Photography course, the forerunner to all current student-centred higher education courses in the medium. Another notable achievement around this time was the establishment, with his wife, Angela, of The Photographers’ Place – the UK’s first residential photography workshop - at their Peak District home.

He has exhibited regularly since 1970 throughout the British Isles, Europe, North America, Japan and Australasia and is co- author (with Thomas J. Cooper) of Dialogue with Photography (1979/2005), Approaching Photography (1982/2004), and White Peak Dark Peak (1990). His work is in the art collections of, amongst others, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; National Museum of Photography, Film and Television, Bradford; Arts Council England; Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris; Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm; Australian National Gallery, Canberra ; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Cleveland Museum of Art in the USA.

A former member of the Arts Council’s first photography committee in the 1970s,he helped set up the trend-setting Derby Festival of Photography in 1991 and was a director of East Midlands Arts for four years during the nineties.

A major influence on contemporary British photography, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1990, and four years later was awarded an MBE by The Queen for services to photography. Since 1995 he has been a professor at De Montfort University, Leicester, where he runs the MA in Photography course. The Paul and Angela Hill Archive was acquired in 2004 by Birmingham City Archives which houses one of the country’s major collections of photographs.