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Ones To Watch

British Journal of Photography’s annual global talent search.

Each year, we reach out to editors, professors, directors, curators, writers, publishers, agents and photographers to nominate emerging practitioners who are making outstanding work.

Going back 10 years, our archive of interviews offers a window into where photography is heading.

Çağdaş Erdoğan stands trial on 13 February

On 13 February, Çağdaş Erdoğan will stand trial in Istanbul accused of membership and support of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a separatist group classified as a terrorist organisation by the Turkish government. Erdoğan is of Kurdish descent, grew up in the region and, as an adult, embedded with affiliates of the PKK during the complex, multifactional conflict that has crossed the borders of Syria, Iraq and Turkey. But he did so, he claims, purely as a photojournalist intent on documenting an unseen conflict for the world’s media and without any alliance with or allegiance to any organisation. His only allegiance was to photography.

8 February 2018

Arunà Canevascini wins the La Fabrica/Photo London Book Dummy Award

Arunà Canevascini was nominated by Erik Kessels for the richness of her projects, which merge femininity, domesticity and migration. In Villa Argentina, Canevascini examines these themes through elaborately-designed images in which the domestic settings she photographs are disrupted by intrusions from both the history of art and her own family past.

16 January 2018

Fresh talent first in indie photo magazine Splash and Grab

After graduating in 2012 with a BA in photography from University of the West of England, Bristol, Max Ferguson became quickly disillusioned by the lack of viable career paths or platforms that would publish his or his friends’ work.. Growing frustration quickly turned into inspiration, however, and with that came the idea to create a platform from scratch in the form of Splash and Grab.
“The magazines I really liked or wanted to work for were either shutting down or not in a position to reply to emails, let alone give me a job,” he explains. “So I just decided to start something myself. Lots of magazines start in those DIY circumstances I suppose, with some hot headed graduate who thinks everything will be really easy but ends up finding it really difficult.”

7 December 2017

In Paris: Nothing's In Vain in Senegal for Emmanuelle Andrianjafy

Born in 1983, Emmanuelle Andrianjafy grew up in Madagascar and worked as an engineer in France before moving to Dakar in 2011. Relocation to Senegal proved quite a shock. “It’s very energetic, very hectic, very loud,” she told BJP for the June Ones to Watch issue. “It’s very different to where I’ve lived before. It’s by the sea but it’s not peaceful; the landscape is harsh and dry. I was tempted to not deal with it and just stay at home.”

10 November 2017

In Paris: Three promising Irish photographers defy cliché in Triptych

“This exhibition doesn’t have any of the clichés people might expect Irish photography to have,” says Vivienne Gamble. “I want it to give a viewpoint of the country that a lot of people wouldn’t necessarily expect.”
The director of Peckham’s Seen Fifteen Gallery is talking about Triptych, an exhibition showing in Paris from 09-12 November in association with Centre Culturel Irlandais. The exhibition, which will be held across the three levels of the Espace Lhomond gallery just across the street from the CCI, features work by three of Ireland’s most promising photographers: Ciarán Óg Arnold, Megan Doherty and Martin Seeds, each of whom is showing photographs deeply rooted in their homeland.

8 November 2017

Çağdaş Erdoğan writes from his Istanbul prison

“MY FRIENDS!” writes Çağdaş Erdoğan from the Silivri Prison, Istanbul on 21 September, in a handwritten letter translated by a curator contact and circulated by his publisher Akina Books. “I salute all of you with my heart. Regardless of the illogical times we have been having, I hope you are well. Don’t worry about me. I’m doing well despite the physical and psychological negativities I experienced since the last two weeks.” Erdoğan was taken into custody at the start of September and officially arrested on 13 September, when he was put into pretrial arrest on accusations of membership to a terrorist organisation. In his letter, Erdoğan discusses the reason he was initially apprehended, and discusses some of the reasons he has been given for the terrorism charges.

27 September 2017

Çağdaş Erdoğan arrested in Istanbul

Turkish photographer Çağdaş Erdoğan has been arrested in Istanbul according to his agency 140journos. The photographer, who was featured in the British Journal of Photography’s Ones to Watch list earlier this year, is thought to have been arrested whilst taking photographs in Istanbul’s central Kadikoy district

14 September 2017

From the BJP archives: Jamie Hawkesworth, One to Watch

The celebrated young fashion photographer opens a solo show in Huis Marseilles on 09 September, but was a BJP One to Watch back in January 2014. “On the one hand, he is quite at home documenting passers-by in the grade II-listed Preston Bus Station, the future of which hangs in the balance, or photographing a British polo contest at Cowdray Park, as he did for Man About Town,” wrote Gemma Padley. “On the other, he has shot campaigns for designers Céline and Marc Jacobs, and has been featured in magazines such as i-D and Paris Vogue. In light of this impressive CV, Hawkesworth’s ability to turn his hand to whatever comes his way seems to know no bounds.”

2 August 2017

Ones to Watch: Durimel

Born in Paris to parents from Guadeloupe and living in Miami and St Maarten before settling in Los Angeles, twin brothers Jalan and Jibril Durimel draw on a geographically diverse upbringing to create a new wave of fashion photography. “We’re not necessarily ‘cultured’ but we saw a bit more of what the world had to offer,” they say, adding: “more understanding of the intersections of life, is something we’d like to suggest – more exchange between nations – in our future work”.

5 July 2017