ONLINE EXHIBITIONS

Evgenia Arbugaeva, Untitled 87, from the series ‘Chukotka’, 2019–2020. © Evgenia Arbugaeva

Evgenia Arbugaeva:
Stories from the Russian Arctic

In collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery, this online exhibition presents new work by Russian photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva, whose major ongoing project explores life in northern outposts of the Russian Arctic. Alongside selections from three recently completed series and her earlier project ‘Weather Man’, currently the subject of her first major solo exhibition in London, Arbugaeva describes her working methods and discusses the emotional resonance of returning to the place where she grew up.

Alma Haser: Multiple Identities

This online exhibition presents a selection of photographs by Alma Haser, whose work explores aspects of identity using various different forms and techniques. Haser describes the background and motivation for two of her recent series, ‘Cosmic Surgery’ and ‘Within 15 Minutes’, alongside examples of work drawn from these projects.

Alma Haser, Patient No. 1, 2016. © Alma Haser
Mariko Sakaguchi, Nakata’s house, from the series ‘One Hundred Views of Bathing’, 2010. © Mariko Sakaguchi

Mariko Sakaguchi: One Hundred Views of Bathing

This online exhibition presents a series of photographs by Japanese photographer Mariko Sakaguchi, whose current project ‘One Hundred Views of Bathing’ offers a distinctive perspective on self-expression and identity.

Alegra Ally: Into Motherhood

This online exhibition presents a selection of photographs by anthropologist Alegra Ally, whose work explores the themes of childbirth and motherhood in indigenous cultures across three continents. Ally describes the background and context for several of her recent projects, alongside portfolios of photographic work from Namibia, Papua New Guinea and Russia.

Alegra Ally, Nenets mother and child dressed for the cold, 2016. © Alegra Ally
Clarence Sinclair Bull, Ruth Harriet Louise photographing Joan Crawford, 1928. © John Kobal Foundation

Ruth Harriet Louise:
Hollywood Photographer for MGM

In collaboration with the John Kobal Foundation, this online exhibition presents a selection of stunning photographs by Ruth Harriet Louise, photographer for the MGM film studio in Hollywood during the late 1920s. During an intense but ultimately short-lived career, Louise photographed many of the studio’s greatest stars of the era, including Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Marion Davies and Norma Shearer. Organiser Philip Grover introduces the material, while leading scholar of Hollywood photography Robert Dance offers a newly commissioned essay on the life and career of Louise, alongside photographs demonstrating the diverse range of her work.

Festival in a Box

Photo Oxford collaborated with Photoworks on presentation of Silvia Rosi's Encounters series for our 2020 festival.  Photoworks presented their own photography festival during October 2020 Propositions for Alternative Narratives. Their response to the pandemic was to create a Festival in a Box  – a portable festival where you become the curator and decide where and how to install it.

Sethembile Msezane: Speaking Through Walls

OVADA - Open Call Exhibition

OVADA Gallery and ONLINE
Now closed for lockdown

40 images from our Open Call competition, selected by our panel of experts and by public vote on Photocrowd, exploring the theme 'Women & Photography: Ways of Seeing & Being Seen.'

Our panel of experts were:
Cornelia Parker, internationally acclaimed artist; Dr Lena Fritsch, Curator of Modern & Contemporary Art, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford; Katy Barron, Photography Curator and Senior Director, Michael Hoppen Gallery; Taous Dahmani, PhD Fellow, The Panthéon-Sorbonne University, Paris; Alan Capel, Head of Content, Alamy stock photography agency; and Sian Davey, Fine Art Photographer and Humanist Psychotherapist.

This image is entitled 'Christelle ' from the 'National Narrative' series by Elisa Moris Vai, the winner in the Expert Judge's category.
View a short film about her series here 

JA Mortram: Helena, Every Day is a Morning After

An film exhibition by JA Mortram and Giles Scott, in collaboration with Oxford Brookes University
view it here 

Jim Mortram is a British social documentary photographer and writer, based in Dereham, Norfolk in the East of England. This exhibition portrays the life of a young girl in small town inertia, co-curated by Grant Scott (head of Photography at Oxford Brookes).
Jim Mortram's ongoing project, Small Town Inertia, records the lives of a number of disadvantaged and marginalised people living near to his home, in order to tell stories, he believes are under-reported.

© JA Mortram, Small Town Inertia

HEIR Archive: Women and the Camera

'Bridge of Constantinople and view of Yeni Djami' c 1900. Galata Bridge, Istanbul, Turkey. Photographer unknown.

This photo presentation uses images from the HEIR Project digital image archive of the Institute of Archaeology, University of Oxford. It explores the relationship over the past 150 years of women from around the globe with cameras, both as subjects in front of the lens and as photographers.

The pictures come from selected university teaching collections and images donated to the HEIR Project. Most are from obsolete photographic media such as glass plate negatives, film negatives, lantern slides or 35 mm images, so had been unseen for decades before their revival as digital scans by the HEIR Project.

Pitt Rivers Museum:
Photography and Women

As part of the PhotoOxford Festival 2020 the Pitt Rivers Museum's staff have taken a fresh look at their huge collection of around 300,000 historic and contemporary photographs, and picked out one that for them resonates strongly with the Festival's theme, 'Women and Photography: Ways of Seeing and Being Seen'.

self-portrait by the Tibetan artist Nyema Droma, 2018.
Courtesy Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford [2019.18.20.1]
Three Heads © Paul Freestone 

Oxford Photography Group exhibition

Online: View the show here!

The OPG approached the festival theme from a variety of visual and conceptual perspectives - from candid observations on the streets of the city to the intensely personal examination of the mother-child relationship. The select reflects a range of the possible representations of women and challenges societal and visual stereotypes, often through personal encounters and experiences.

The exhibited work has been selected by Katy Barron, photography curator and Senior Director at Michael Hoppen Gallery, London. She is Chair of the Board of Trustees of Photofusion in Brixton and a Trustee of Photo Oxford.

Exhibiting photographers:

Wendy Aldiss, Thomas Capon, Kirk Ellingham, Paul Freestone, Kazem Hakimi, Rob Judges, Thomas Nicolaou, Martin Stott, Paddy Summerfield, Patricia Baker-Cassidy

Oxford International Links

Covered Market, High Street & Market Street, and online

The Covered Market is open:

Monday-Saturday, 8am-5.30pm

Sunday, 10am-5pm

Exhibit is on the wall near the entrance to The Golden Cross

View a selection of the images in a virtual gallery here

View the full online exhibition of images from all 8 twin cities, with the Curator's statement here.

Oxford’s 8 twin cities - Leiden in the Netherlands, Bonn in Germany, León in Nicaragua, Grenoble in France, Perm in Russia, Wrocław in Poland, Ramallah in Palestine and Padua in Italy - will all be brought together for the first time in a joint exhibition of photography reflecting the festival theme. The exhibition will be curated by by Oxford photographers Irmgard Hueppe and Simon Murison-Bowie. The full exhibition will appear online, and highlights representative of the 8 twin cities will be displayed in the Covered Market, on the wall behind the Wroclaw gnome.

Our thanks to everybody who has contributed to this exhibition, providing us with fascinating glimpses into the lives, preoccupations and cultures that define the internationality of our twinning links.

Full more infomation view our
Oxford International Links page

Fotografie Eelkje Colmjon.
The Future Is Now 14, Leiden © Eelkje Colmjon

Julia Margaret Cameron and her contemporaries

View short film here


Lena Fritsch, the Ashmolean Museum's Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, explores the Ashmolean's collection of works by British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879), for the Photo Oxford Festival 2020.

History of Science Museum

Broad Street, Oxford

View Online display here


Online display of prints and lantern slides by Sarah Angelina Acland (1849-1930), Anna Atkin's volumes of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (1843 and 1853), and Charles Dodson's photograph of Annie Rogers, a campaigner for women's full membership of the University of Oxford who went on to be one of the first women graduates 100 years ago.  Read about the Blue Plaque recently put up in recognition of Annie Rogers here

In the Museum: Display of photographic equipment including that used by Charles Dodgson.

Photograph (albumen print) of Annie Rogers & Mary Jackson as Queen Eleanor & Fair Rosamund by CL Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), July 3, 1863

St Swithun's Cyanotypes

Following in the footsteps of Anna Atkins, St Swithun's Primary School in Kennington, took part in outreach sessions delivered, in collaboration with Fusion Arts and photographer John Blythe, by Vicky McGuinness through TORCH (University of Oxford) as part of the Humanities Cultural Programme.