Bristol Photo Festival’s Autumn Showcase

Bristol Photo Festival delivers a long-term programme of exhibitions, events, commissions and opportunities for engagement city-wide, from multiple indoor and outdoor venues including the Martin Parr Foundation and the Royal Photographic Society (both situated at Paintworks), Arnolfini, Centrespace Gallery, St Michael on the Mount Without, Underfall Yard, Windmill Hill City Farm and the Vestibules on College Green.

Its Autumn Showcase is now on, and features a rich tapestry of photographic exhibitions, all free to access. Here are some of the highlights, and the remarkable human stories behind them.

We Are Still Here – an interdisciplinary research project led by collaborators Mareike Günsche, Dr Adrian Flint, and Martin Burns

Bringing together Dr Adrian Flint (University of Bristol, SPAIS), Mareike Günsche (Photographer/Educator and Lecturer of photography at the State University of Arts, Mongolia) and Martin Burns (Writer, HIV/AIDS activist and equality advocate), We Are Still Here was produced by the Bristol Photo Festival commissioning programme, in collaboration with the University of Bristol’s Brigstow Institute.

The exhibition concentrates on individuals affected by HIV/AIDS, and shows Günsche’s portraits, alongside images of their living spaces. The project aims to illuminate those in society who may have dwindled in the public consciousness, and to tell their ongoing stories. An online strand to the exhibition allows people affected by HIV/AIDS to share their own personal experiences, wherever they are in the world.

Veritee and Barry, married and living in Cornwall, both live with HIV and acknowledge the importance of where they live: “It’s such a beautiful place and having the animals and the space to enjoy it.” – photo: Mareike Günsche

“Photography can immortalise victims and offer remembrance, but this medium is also a poignant and reassuring tool for survivors. Not to be forgotten are the families of both, and the difficulties that come with understanding a disease that’s also experienced second-hand. The family portrait will be examined as an institution of both exclusion and inclusion, with participatory photography to be used as a means of reclamation for the absence of a whole community.

Jonathan was diagnosed with HIV in October 1982 when it was known as HTLV-3. But whatever it’s name, Jonathan is aware he’s one of the lucky ones. “I have been amazingly fortunate in terms of what HIV has dealt to me because I’m 71 now. And I’m still here.” – photo: Mareike Günsche

“Due to stigmatisation, HIV+ people have been excluded and even banished from many traditional living rooms in the past. If there is no image, there is no identity. This is even truer in today’s times of expanding social media, where the image becomes the medium of legitimation. Photography and its crucial role as a means of identity, visibility and representation will therefore be used as a resource to help negate such stigmatisation.”
Martin Burns

High Volume: Bristol Sounds – Mark Simmons

Revisiting his archive of 20,000 images documenting the Bristol music scene over the last four decades, Mark Simmons has selected 30 photographs that together, represent the city’s vibrant musical heritage, and the emergence of the ‘Bristol sound’.

Those captured include titans of the musical landscape Roni Size & Reprazent, Massive Attack, Rob Smith AKA RSD of Smith & Mighty and Phantom Limb, who feature alongside shots of sound systems and exultant crowds at St Paul’s Carnival, the now defunct Ashton Court Festival, Easton Community Centre and Trinity. From deep house to drum and bass, Simmons was there, in the throng, reflecting the community he was such an intrinisic part of.

Roni Size and Krust, Bristol Drum & Bass duo photographed at Brigstocke Road studio, January 1996 for Straight No Chaser magazine. As Reprazent, they would go on to win the 1997 Mercury Prize for their album New Forms.

“When taking [action] photos you’ve got to be in the eye of the storm to really capture that moment and Mark has always been that guy.”
Daddy G, Massive Attack

I AM NOT INVisible – Thilde Jensen

Four years in the making, I AM NOT INVisible is Danish photographer Thilde Jensen’s visual account of homelessness in America, and her first exhibition in the UK. Her meeting in 2014 with Reine and Lost, two homeless men in Syracuse, New York living under a highway, was the catalyst for a project capturing homelessness and inequality in New York, New Mexico, Las Vegas, and New Orleans. Jensen’s own experience of a failed system led to two years of living in the woods, after falling ill and finding herself without health insurance – a period that she wrote about in her first book The Canaries.

Drake: “I spent time inside, so much human potential rotting away behind bars”. Las Vegas, Nevada 2017 – photo: Thilde Jensen

“Though I had lived outside myself, the people I encountered in the street were there for reasons other than mine. I wanted the pictures to authentically show the often brutal reality of life in the streets of America. This meant learning a new way of making unposed photographs with my old medium format film camera, simply following and mirroring the people and their unfolding experiences.

“I spent many hours over weeks and months, gaining the trust of the homeless and understanding their struggles. I listened and I let the pictures come naturally. I tried to work from a place of extreme empathy instead of getting in the way of the people I was with.”
Thilde Jensen

We Are Still Here is open 11.30am-4.30pm Tues-Fri until October 30, at The Vestibules (Park Rd), City Hall, College Green, Bristol, BS1 5TR.

High Volume: Bristol Sounds is open 12pm-8pm Thu-Sat until October 30, at Strange Brew, 10-12 Fairfax St, Bristol, BS1 3DB.

I AM NOT INVisible: Thilde Jensen is open 10.30am-5.30pm Thu-Sun until December 19, at Martin Parr Foundation, Paintworks, 316, Arnos Vale, Bristol, BS4 3AR.

Main photo, above: – ‘Anita’, by Mareike Günsche (part of the We Are Still Here exhibition). Anita is a playwright living in Brighton who has recently turned 50, where she also marked her silver anniversary with HIV. “Like it or not, here we are; we’re bonded. And it’s the end of the line for the virus because I’m not going to pass it on.”

Read more: exclusive St Paul’s Carnival images from Martin Parr