#mobformat

[mishobaranovic]

Here we go! Through @mobilephotonetwork we're launching #formatevidence. Submit your photos on theme of EVIDENCE for a chance to be exhibited at the UK's largest photo festival - FORMAT (@formatfestival) Follow the link in my bio for full information! Exhibition launches Friday 13 March and you can submit until 12 April. No fee, all welcome. Let me know if you have questions. #photofestival #photoexhibition#mobformat #derby All images @oggsie

[emahomagazine]

Forward FORMAT: Louise Clements

United Kingdom -

With her name among the top 40 creatives in the European Review of Photography, Louise Clements is the brain behind one of the UK’s leading photography biennales, the Format Festival, which was founded in 2004. Aside from being an internationally renowned  curator, artist and writer, Louise is also a Kathak dancer and a bass guitar player. Emaho talks to her about her work, her ideas, the inception of Format and what the Format Festival 2013 has in store for us all.

  To take your love for photography and curating and turning it into one of the largest photography festivals would’ve taken more than just passion. Tell us how you developed an interest in the two.

Photography, I have always had a passion for, it is undoubtedly one of the most important mediums of our time. It is also one of the most democratic. Nearly everyone has a camera. Granted, not everyone is a great photographer but we are all familiar with the art. Developing visual literacy is something that I am very involved with, in terms of thinking about how we can read and interpret through the programming, writing, portfolio reviewing and teaching that I do. I am very fortunate to have visited many photography festivals throughout the world and find the festival structure to be a brilliant way to focus activity, festivals are laboratories of the future, they are an essential meeting place for ideas to coalesce; they transform the everyday and build a critical mass. When programmed well they are pioneers of intercultural dialogue, whilst celebrating difference and fostering a platform for voices, multiple narratives and engaging audiences and participants in developing understandings. Photography festivals are often pivotal international meeting places and a catalyst for contemporary photographic practice. Derby has a history of pioneering in photography, from Henry Fox Talbot and the photographers of the day taking trips into Derbyshire coming back to the dark room and processing their images experimenting and extending the form of photography a fascinating archive of photographic studios from that time.

Derby and Trent University was the Photography Degree in the 1980s, and Derby had a Photography Festival in the past which ended in 1997. I started working with QUAD in 2002, when the opportunity came when a colleague Mark Durden from the University of Derby hosted a Creative Camera Conference there in 2005. This was the catalyst in 2004 for FORMAT co-founder Mike Brown and I to start the FORMAT International Photography Festival. The first festival was themed around Documentary, Memory and Place was run on a lot of goodwill, partner programme funds and a small grant from the Arts Council of England for marketing; which we used to create the logo, website and guides. We were very lucky to have great artists participating in the first edition such as Tom Wood and Willie Doherty. Right from the start we established some of the frameworks that we work on to today such as EXPOSURE which is an international open call. It is our ethos to be open to find new talents. Essentially it came down to the right time and place, initiative and enough energy to do something new. We are now established as a large scale biennial taking place in March.

  FORMAT11 exhibition in QUAD Gallery; Image by Graham Lucas Commons

- See more at: http://www.emahomagazine.com/2012/09/forward-format/#sthash.y3GWBgQn.dpuf