Photography Festival launches
ACTS of love and rebellion is the theme of this year’s Guernsey Photography Festival, which had its opening ceremony at St James last night.
More than 20 international artists will be displaying their work at a range of venues, including around Market Square, the Sunken Gardens and the German Underground Hospital.
Jean-Christophe Godet, director of the festival, said the theme expressed the social and political commentary underlying the photographs and the aim was to get people talking.
‘I think it reflects on our society at the moment – love because of the resilience because of Covid. People have demonstrated the need for love and the resilience of loving each other.
‘And also rebellion, which I think is very relevant to lots of conflict and revolutions going on in the world. We have an exhibition about Hong Kong, the umbrella revolution, we have an exhibition about the demonstrations in France etc. The festival is designed to inspire people and also open conversation. We’re not trying to please everybody, some people might not like the kind of photo that we demonstrate and I’m fine with that. All we’re trying to say is that there are some important subjects in those exhibitions. Please be curious, try to know a little bit more about the artist and what they’re trying to do, and then you can have an open mind about what’s going on in the world. That’s what a festival of quality is about.’
There are various different talks happening today at the Digital Greenhouse in Market Square, and three exhibition openings at the Greenhouse Gallery at Guernsey Museum, the Sunken Gardens, and the Gatehouse Gallery.
This year represents the 10th anniversary edition of the festival, and Mr Godet said it had been particularly challenging to organise, which was not just down to Covid.
‘What we struggle with the most, and we struggle every year with this, is the lack of infrastructure in Guernsey for the arts, and if I could make a call to the arts community and also the political community, please invest in a proper structure for the arts in Guernsey.
‘We reached a level where we can’t set up a festival. We had to delay some of the exhibition to next year because we couldn’t find any venue available and we’ve tried absolutely everything and looked everywhere.’
To get around the problem, 50% of the programme exhibition is being shown this year and the event is being stretched into 2022 in order to welcome further artists.
For full details of all the events and talks, visit guernseyphotographyfestival.com.
