Portfolio Development Day
Saturday 10th June 2023
9.45 AM – 5.00 PM
Staffordshire University, College Road, Stoke-on-Trent, ST4 2DE
£25 / £30
Book your place here
GRAIN Projects is excited to be delivering a day designed to advise and support the development of photographer’s portfolios. Reviews and presentations will be led by expert and experienced professionals from the photography sector.
The event will be ticketed and must be booked in advance.
Limited places available. Once your booking is confirmed please email stephen.burke@GRAINPhotographyHub.co.uk to confirm which reviewers you would like to see. (please note this operates on a first come first serve basis).
The day will focus on advice and developing skills needed to build and present your portfolio to assist you in making submissions, securing commissions and preparing for appointments and interviews. As part of the day there will be presentations by experienced people from the photography world and group and individual one to one advice and reviews. The day is ideal for emerging photographers, artists and students, to help them develop a professional portfolio.
For many photographers and artists a portfolio is the key way to secure work, commissions and exhibitions and to showcase your project. A portfolio allows you to demonstrate your talent, your career and your ambition. This day aims to capture the importance of the portfolio, and offer advice and support about presentation and image selection.
Our Reviewers and Presenters are:
David Severn, Photographer
David Severn is a Documentary Photographer based in Nottingham, UK. His photography deals with themes such as the effects of deindustrialization, working class culture and social life within British post industrial communities. Drawn to subjects that echo his experiences growing up in a former Coal Mining town in the East Midlands, David’s photographs seek to capture a sense of place shaped by his memories and cultural background.
His work has been published in the New York Times, British Journal of Photography and The Guardian and exhibited internationally, most recently at Martin Parr Foundation, Bristol.
Lucy Mounfield, Assistant Curator IKON Gallery
Lucy Mounfield is Assistant Curator at Ikon. She was awarded her PhD in History of Art from the University of Nottingham in August 2022. Her thesis provides a recontextualisation of the ideological, spatial and material conditions to which women photographers were subject in the United States after the Second World War.
She held the position of Kluge Fellow in 2020, undertaking a three-month research fellowship at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Whilst presenting her research at academic conferences within the UK and abroad, she has also published widely on the history and theory of photography. Her peer-reviewed article –“Little Gems of Color: Kodak, Camera Design as Fashion, and the Gendering of Photography” – was published in the leading photography journal, Transbordeur (Éditions Macula, 2021). She is currently part of the Tate/Paul Mellon Centre British Art Network’s Emerging Curators Group 2023.
Mario Popham, Photographer, Curator and Educator
Mario is a photographer, curator and educator of Japanese descent, based in Manchester. He graduated from the Manchester School of Art in 2007 and has since continued to work on personal projects and commissions. In his personal work, his interests lie in man’s often paradoxical relationship to the natural environment and how this finds expression in the post-industrial areas of Britain and abroad.
His work has been exhibited and published in Britain and internationally, most recently at HOME
(Manchester), Signal (Barrow in Furness) and in external exhibitions with Open Eye Gallery. As a freelance curator, Mario has led and curated on the production of a number of contemporary
photography exhibitions in the North, working with and alongside organisations such as Open Eye
Gallery, Impressions Gallery, HOME Manchester and Castlefield Gallery.
Nilupa Yasmin, Artist and Educator
Nilupa Yasmin is an award-winning artist and educator with a primarily lens-based practice. She explores the principles of art and craft and the expanded materiality within photography.
The artist is interested in the notion of culture, self-identity, and anthropology. Whilst investigating
ideals and traditions that are close to home, she repeatedly draws upon her own identity through
gender, religion and her British Bangladeshi culture and heritage. An element of her practice
focuses on socially engaged photography, she works collaboratively with various communities to
produce and curate works of Art.
Within her educational programme she implements and highlights feminist narratives focusing on
women of colour, alongside offering an alternative perspective to westernised art books.
Please note you will be able to book for 2 one to one Portfolio Reviews during the afternoon and will have the opportunity for Group Reviews with the GRAIN Projects teams for advice and networking.
Supported by Staffordshire University
