'rivers, signals, miracles' - Real Utopias Exhibition at Brighton Photo Fringe 2022

Abstract

'rivers, signals, miracles'

The events of the last few years have radically altered the ways we inhabit and move through urban, rural and digital landscapes. rivers, signals, miracles unravels a range of contemporary socio-political themes. From the human body, the exhibition moves through domestic environments out to the landscape, encompassing technological, psychological and material worlds. Autobiographical concerns surface through the microcosm of a newborn baby, and intergenerational connections to history and architecture. Alongside digital and analogue photographs, we find practitioners experimenting with lumen prints, cyanotypes, found photographs and archives. The exhibition aspires to create a potent picture of a better place, tomorrow.

Miracle on the Han River is a series by Adam Bennett exploring the location immediate to the Han River in Seoul and surrounding areas, a river which is formed from the confluence of two others originating in South Korea and North Korea. Bennett’s photographs offer views of the river’s significance in social, economic and geographical terms, charting both the rapid urban development of the site and the apparently unspoiled natural beauty of other proximate areas. The river curves around mountains and under high-rise rail structures, around joggers, picnickers and apartment blocks in a portrait of place under transformation.