LOOK VOLUNTEER APPLICATION

Please download the volunteer information and the Volunteer application form to apply.

We love volunteers, so we are keeping applications open until 5pm, Wednesday 6 May, 2015.

Come and join the fun.

LOOK Liverpool International Photography Festival is committed to equal opportunities and diversity. This commitment extends to our volunteers and we welcome everyone from our community as a volunteer. We will not discriminate against our volunteers on the grounds of gender, sexual orientation, disability or impairment, age, race, creed, colour, nationality, ethnic or national origin, trade union activity, HIV or marital status, religion or belief or similar bases. We value difference, and recognise the value that the different backgrounds, skills, outlooks and experiences of our volunteers bring to the organization. Furthermore, we will not tolerate behaviour that contradicts the letter or spirit of this statement or our full equal opportunities policy.

If you require assistance to apply, or the volunteer document in any other format please email: annaatlookphotofestival.com

In the final week of his residency with LOOK/15, Ignacio Acosta has continued to research copper in Liverpool with the aid of his map. Searching for hidden materials within the city, Acosta has been focusing his lens on copper fragments within the financial district, such as bronze banking doors, electric wires, and air conditioning generators.

Acosta has also worked on the North docks in order to reflect upon the city’s long history of international maritime trade and its relation to contemporary scrapyards. Finally, he has worked at Sudley House, where he has searched for elements containing copper within the building.

Although his residency within the city is now complete, we will be keeping up with the work and following Acosta up to and throughout LOOK/15, where he will be delivering a talk at the Bluecoat with Louise Purbrick and leading a radical history tour throughout the city.

In the meantime, he would like to express his thanks to:
The Bluecoat team, particularly Mary Anne-Marie McQuay, Mary Cloake, and Rachel Goodsall.
The Traces of Nitrate team: Xavier Ribas and Louise Purbrick.
Mary Goody, Graeme Milne, Francis & Peter, Carles Guerra, Wendy Simkiss, Rory Miller, Gary Everett, and Thomas Dukes for their inspiring conversations and support.
The funding bodies: LOOK, the University of Brighton, Arts and Humanities Research Council, and Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes, Chile.

And a big thanks to Emma Smith and Martin of LOOK/15.

Copy and share this URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR5N_u0Ek80

Find out more about BayTV Liverpool here: http://www.baytvliverpool.com/

Following the walking map designed during the first week of his residency, Ignacio Acosta has been making his way around Liverpool’s financial district, looking for copper hidden throughout the city.

Acosta has long since expressed interest in the representation of the banking sector, as seen in some of his previous projects, namely Mapping the Zone and Corners of Power. He is especially fascinated by the emptiness of the buildings in Liverpool’s financial district, an effect that has worsened since the financial crisis, and 8 Water Street has proved to be a particularly inspiring place to work, due to its location in the business district, history as a former insurance building, and current use as cultural hub.

Additionally, Acosta has been able to speak to Graeme Milne of the University of Liverpool, senior lecturer in modern history. Milne works primarily with business and maritime history, particularly in regards to the shipping trade. During their talk, they discussed the map, and Milne provided generous insightful information on the urban configuration of 19th century Liverpool.

Acosta was also able to meet up with Wendy Simkiss, assistant curator of the Geology department at the World Museum. She offered a selection of wonderful mineral specimens from Chile, part of the Museum’s collection.

The coming days will see Acosta continuing to photograph the financial district and the North docks.

He would also like to express his deepest gratitude to both Simkiss and Milne for their time and support.

During the first week of his residency, Ignacio Acosta has been devoting much of his time to research, making use of the archives at the Liverpool Central Library and the Maritime Museum, and compiling a list of key companies involved in Liverpool’s historical copper trade.

Looking through trade directories and customs information, such as the Liverpool Bills of Entry, the Liverpool Commercial List, and Gore’s Directory of Liverpool, Acosta was able to highlight copper brokers and merchants active in 1877. He has identified over 40 companies and is building a walking map of their locations, which will be used for the radical history tour taking place during the festival.

Next week, Acosta will be exploring how traces of these exchange activities can photographed, following the map as a guide to consider Liverpool’s forgotten relation to the copper trade. He will be also conducting behind the scenes photographic work as the World Museum looks for copper specimens. Additionally at the World Museum, he will be taking photographs of the mineral collection display, which will contribute to an ongoing series of mineralogical museums that is taking place between Chile and Europe.

For the next three weeks, London-based Chilean photographer Ignacio Acosta will be researching and mapping out Liverpool’s relationship to copper. In a residency based between the Bluecoat and 8 Water Street, Acosta will be visiting sites of historical relevance, as well as those that illustrate Liverpool’s relationship to copper today. We’ll be following Acosta throughout his residency, keeping you up to date on his findings and workflow.

Copper has consistently been an invaluable resource through history. It’s used in virtually everything, from communications technologies to transportation equipment, building construction, electronic applications and consumer goods. Due to its widespread use, it even seems to have the ability to predict changes in the global economy, lending to its nickname – Dr. Copper. Through an extensive and interconnected body of work, Acosta follows copper’s trail from remote extractions sites in the Atacama Desert to its manufacturing and distribution centres in Britain, exploring the geography of each location and the political and social connotations involved with copper.

In the opening weekend of LOOK/15, Acosta’s residency will be followed up by a talk at the Bluecoat with Art & Design historian, Louise Purbrick of the University of Brighton, as well as a radical history tour throughout the city.

Acosta is also part of the group, Traces of Nitrate: Mining history and photography between Britain and Chile, with Xavier Ribas’ exhibition Nitrates, which opens at the Bluecoat on 10 April and runs throughout the festival.

Acosta and his residency are supported by LOOK/15, University of Brighton, Arts and Humanities Research Council, and Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes, and Chile.

In partnership with Blaze, a project for young people, LOOK have appointed Cameron Proctor to document Ignacio Acosta’s residency for LOOK/15. We hope you’ll welcome Cameron to the team, follow his stories and start getting involved with all the ins and outs, goings on and programme updates that are sure to follow!

Thanks to Creative Tourist for their online feature about LOOK/15:Exchange. Read the article here.

LOOK would like to say thank you to the friends, press, artists, and independent writers who came to Thursday’s event, which unveiled the LOOK/15 programme for the first time and brought together some of the contributing artists. Here’s us, presenting at the Photographers’ Gallery, who played excellent hosts. With thanks to Jack Hunter for the image.

Following last week’s press launch, we are stepping up the hype about this year’s Liverpool International Photography Festival. We now have coverage in Nerve magazine and there’s plenty more to come. Thanks to Pippa Jane Wielgos for getting online so quickly! Click here to read her article.

LOOK are seeking a freelance Festival Coordinator to help deliver LOOK/15.

To find out more use this link.

Please note: this advert is for a contract ending 12 June 2015. The exact number of contract days will be negotiated based on the start date of the contract. The day rate is based on a pro rata of £25,000.

Application is by cover letter and CV addressed to Adam Lee, Chair of the Board of Directors, LOOK at [email protected]. Applications must be received no later than close of business (5pm) on Wednesday 18 February 2015.

We look forward to receiving your applications!

Coinciding with LOOK/15 is Cunard’s 175th anniversary. To celebrate, Liverpool will be visited by three famous and well-travelled women. These ships, the Queens - Mary, Elizabeth and Victoria - will gather in a spectacle that links the Mersey to the ocean; the city with her transatlantic neighbours and, ultimately, Liverpudlians with the world. These grande dames of the sea represent not only distances crossed in time and space, but the movement of thoughts, peoples, materials and histories. They represent ideological structures and powerful, boundary-crossing endeavour. Between them they have moved dignitaries and paupers; treasures and luggage; materials and lives around the world, in a set of exchanges that represent contemporary life‘s flux.

Often the subject of the lens and historically belittled as the domestic maintainer of family ‘keepsake’ images, women are still under-represented in the photographic industry. LOOK/15 platforms female photography from today and yesteryear, offering glimpses in to the artistic pursuits and political passions of women.

Liverpool is proud to have a rich history of influential women with interesting stories. Florence Nightingale, Eleanor Rathbone, Margaret Chambre Hardman, Bessie Braddock, Cilla Black, April Ashley and Kim Cattrall have all had their impacts on the city and many more have played vital roles. Some less famous city women have been depicted in the media previously, such as the dock side flower workers, the mothers, wives and siblings of fallen heroes and the emerging talents of stage and screen; many grace the waterfront (The Three Graces, Speed – the Modern Mercury and the Lady Liver Bird herself, guiding in her sailors) and are walked past by thousands of people daily. Now it is your turn to shine a light on these women and those that you know.

In the new year, LOOK will be asking everyone to submit images that connect to the Women and the City theme. So, whether you have created an image that plays on a local moniker, taken a portrait of a female you admire, made a statement against monarchical systems or taken a perfect shot of ships gracing the Mersey, we want to see them. Details will follow in the new year about how you submit your photographs, but in the meantime, get your thinking-caps on and cameras poised to show us the interesting women in your life and the city you have come to love. Submission is open to all.

LOOK are proud to announce that we have been awarded Arts Council England (ACE), Grants for the Arts support for LOOK/15 (15-30 May 2015). This is a great achievement; having Arts Council backing is a valuable kite-mark that demonstrates confidence in LOOK and places us in charge of a publicly funded grant.

This grant will enable us to platform a range of artists, across exhibitions, events and workshops, practical sessions and debates. Our partnership with the City Council and Liverpool ONE will also enable us to work with c.400,000 visitors and engage in the national, 175th Cunard anniversary celebrations.

Now is a great time to add your support to the festival, if you haven’t already. If you have, we’d like to thank you - your support has certainly helped us gain this valuable award. If you haven’t, why not consider how we could work together to communicate with new audiences, set up events or develop new ways of working together?

We’re really excited about the prospects available and hope you’ll join us in a huge ‘Hooray!’. We’d also like to share our thanks and appreciation with ACE, whose generosity and support will contribute to the careers of many artists and a variety of cultural programmes.

Further details will follow, including official save-the-dates and launch invites, competition calls, programme sharing, festival themes and events listings, so please: watch this space!

LOOK Liverpool International Photography Festival, the North West’s premier festival of contemporary photography and photographic practice, today announced it has appointed former arts industry manager Emma Smith as Executive Director.

Emma will be responsible for leading the company through its next phase of growth, building on LOOK’s established festival history. She will direct the company’s long-term growth strategy and lead the evaluation and delivery of all fundraising and sponsorship efforts.

“Given Emma’s arts management, cultivation and enterprise experience within the arts industry, the LOOK Board thought Emma was an ideal choice to lead the organisation through the next critical phase in our growth story,” explains Chair of the Board, Sara-Jayne Parsons. “The entire team is thrilled to welcome Emma as our Executive Director as the festival continues to evolve”.

Since its launch in 2007, LOOK has become the UK’s leading photographic festivals, celebrating its connection with contemporary culture whilst exposing the artistry of the form. Festival exhibitions have included works by internationally acclaimed and nationally recognised photographers such as Edmund Clark, John Darwell, Moyra Davey, John Davies, Mitch Epstein, Charles Fréger, Ken Grant, E. Chambré Hardman, David Maisel, Martin Parr, Rankin, August Sander, Eva Stenram, The Caravan Gallery, Issa Touma, Paul Trevor, Weegee and Tom Wood.

Most recently, Emma was Head of Creative Enterprise at the Bluecoat, reporting directly to the company’s Chief Executive, Mary Cloake, where she sat on the senior management team. In that capacity, Emma was responsible for recruiting and maintaining an extensive creative community and developed additional income streams to support the charity. During her 5-year tenure at the Bluecoat, Emma held other management positions, including those of Creative Community Manager and Creative Enterprise Manager. Earlier in her career, Emma worked as House Manager at the Bluecoat, the Liverpool Playhouse and the Neptune (now Epstein) Theatre having studied fine art with theatre at Liverpool Hope, earning her degree from the University of Liverpool.

Asked to comment, Emma stated: “I am incredibly honoured and wholly excited to have the opportunity to work with artists - locally and globally – and our city’s world-class arts and knowledge organisations to develop a thought-leading, international festival that Liverpool can be proud of. We are an ambitious festival and look forward to demonstrating this with LOOK/15”.

Executive Director

£33,000 pro rata, 4 days/week for 8 months, reporting to the Board Chair

LOOK presents Liverpool’s International Photography Biennial; a four-week festival with a programme of exhibitions, talks, tours, workshops, participation activities and screenings. The LOOK festival features work by emerging and established artists from Liverpool, the UK and beyond. It combines historical exhibitions with contemporary solo and group shows. The majority of work on display is new or being shown in the UK for the first time.

LOOK has already delivered three successful editions of the festival, in 2007, 2011 and 2013, and is now established as one of the leading photography festivals in the UK. To build on from these accomplishments the LOOK Board is seeking an entrepreneurial and energetic individual to oversee the delivery of the 2015 festival and develop a year round programme of activities that promote and support photographic practice in Liverpool and the wider North West.

Overview of role

Initially the Executive Director will work full time with the expectation of the post being extended, and with the possibility of adjusting working hours and aspects of role, subject to funding and the recruitment of additional staff. During this preliminary period the Executive Director will work closely with the Board to prioritise organisational development and fundraising. Your focus will be to build financial support and generate income, nurture partnerships and secure sponsorship for the successful delivery of LOOK/15. After this preliminary period, the Executive Director will maintain overall responsibility of LOOK and manage the successful co-ordination, supervision and delivery of future festivals.

For mor information on the role and how to apply, please download the application pack here

LOOK/13 is over, but work on future editions of Liverpool International Photography Festival is already under way. We’d like to say a huge thank-you to everyone who visited or otherwise supported the festival in 2013. If you’d like to keep in touch about our plans for 2015 and beyond please sign up for our our emailing list.

As the festival enters its closing stages we’d like to say an extra large thank-you to the LOOK/13 team, interns, volunteers, and all of our partners, funders and supporters for making our second edition a great success. We couldn’t have done it without you!

Officially it’s all over at LOOK/13 but we still have a few events sneaking under the wire, including exhibition tours at the Bluecoat and Open Eye Gallery.

International group exhibition BLACKOUT continues at the Exhibition Research Centre until 21 June, with works by Danica Dakic, Dominique Hurth, 
Willem Oorebeek & Aya Ben Ron

The Caravan Gallery’s photography exhibition-cum-alternative visitor information centre is going strong in New Brighton, featuring original works by Ken Grant, Tom Wood and Martin Parr. Open until 23 June - don’t miss it!

Emerging from Redeye’s 9-month professional development programme, four groups have presented exhibitions at LOOK/13. This weekend is your last chance to catch Possessed Collective (81 Renshaw Street, to 15 June) and Fabricate Collective (Fallout Factory, to 16 June). Blind Spot Collective (public realm) runs until later in June and Lamppost Collective (The Brink) until August.

On 11 June FACT will be hosting Lookout UK Youth Conference, an interactive day of photography exhibitions, debates, creative workshops, presentations, multimedia and live music.

From 7 June, The Cornerstone Gallery hosts new work by photographers Kevin Casey, Stephen King and McCoy Wynne. Each photographer has worked in ‘critical dialogue’ with a different writer.

From 8 June, New York-based photographer, filmmaker and writer Moyra Davey presents a brand new commission at Tate Liverpool, featuring work made in Liverpool and Manchester.

Always a step ahead, Open Eye Gallery’s shop is sporting LOOK/13 t-shirts (100% cotton, lovingly hand-printed in Liverpool) and a selection of festival-related books. Hurry while stock last!

For more information please follow this link

In 2005 photographer Nick Danziger was commissioned to create an archive of photographs documenting the lives of women and children across the world. Five years later he went back to find out what had happened to the people he’d photographed. The exhibition opened on 25 May, and there’s an artist talk at 7pm on 5 June.

For more information please follow this link

We’re looking forward to two great events on 5 June. At lunchtime Victoria Gallery & Museum curator Moira Lindsay will introduce Kurt Tong’s exhibition The Queen, the Chairman and I, and at 6pm Graeme Rigby from Side Gallery (Newcastle) joins the Bluecoat curator Sara-Jayne Parsons to talk about their collaborative show Sander/Weegee.

Upcoming highlights include a rare screening of the Liverpool-set Thatcher-era film ‘Business as Usual’ (1987, Lezli-An Barrett) on 23 May and a special volunteer-led Bank Holiday festival tour on 27 May from 2pm.

The tirelessly fabulous Caravan Gallery have popped up in an empty shop on Renshaw Street for the Liverpool leg of their Pride of Place project. Put yourself on The People’s Map at their anarchic exhibition-cum-visitor information centre, until 16 June. For details please click on the image below.

For more information please follow this link

The venerable, award-winning BJP is LOOK/13’s media partner. Pick up a copy from the festival hub at the Bluecoat. LOOK/13 is previewed in the May issue and can be viewed on the latest iPhone app.

www.bjp-online.com

LOOK/13 launches on Friday 17 May with exhibition previews from 6-9pm and the Launch After Party at Camp and Furnace from 9.30pm - don’t miss the ‘Made in Liverpool’ projections at 10pm. Our event-packed opening weekend runs from 16 to 19 May

Ten of the UK’s leading photographers appear in person with quick-fire slide presentations responding to the festival theme ‘who do you think you are?’. Featuring Maja Daniels, Jim Mortram, Alma Haser, Chloe Dewe Matthews, Niall McDiarmid, Jenny Wicks, Tadhg Devlin, Eva Vermandel, Sophie Gerard and Jack Latham,

Photo Pulse is at the Bluecoat on Saturday 18 May, 2.30-4.30pm.

Artist: Lawrence George Giles

Online: www.memoryofamemory.co.uk — March 2013 onwards
Exhibition/Public screening: Bluecoat Gallery — June 2013

Memory of a Memory is a collective memory project derived from individuals recollections of actual photographs that they hold dear,
or which have a personal/specific memory attached to them.

The work reflects a series of themes and topics relating to the photographic image. In particular vernacular photography and the reading or re-reading of these once the original photographic reference points are removed from the process.

Memory of a Memory questions the process by which photographs prompt memories, the ‘distance’ of the actual reading of images, the subjectivity of our own remembering, and the photograph as much as a trace of memory as of reality.

Focusing upon each individual’s ‘reading’ or memory of the photograph it is the participants/audience who are invited to stand in for the photograph in order to release the unrealised redemptive possibilities contained within the photographic object, resulting in a ‘repository’ of private yet publically shared photographic memories.

— Eligibility: Open to all
— Entry fee:
— Submissions: www.memoryofamemory.co.uk

The LOOK/13 website has expanded to include a full listing of festival events and Parallel Programme exhibitions - an array of independent and fringe projects in established and informal spaces, from museums to cafés and empty shops. Highlights include a major new commission by Moyra Davey at Tate Liverpool, Redeye’s Lightbox shows and exhibitions by Ken Grant and Nick Danziger.

Were you born in Liverpool? Have you moved here? What does the city

mean to you? What does it mean to be Made in Liverpool?

To celebrate the launch of LOOK/13 we’re hosting a competition to showcase the cream of local photographic talent. Merseyside-based photographers are invited to submit a series of photographs in response to the title ‘Made in Liverpool’. The winning works will be selected with the help of the Liverpool Post’s Arts Editor Laura Davies and celebrity photographer John Stoddart. The deadline for entries is 17 April 2013.

Made in Liverpool Slideshow