Photography and Poetry Exhibition

Hertford Theatre

29th Oct– 23rd Nov 2019

We invite creative photographers and poets to submit work for an ambitious new showcase juxtaposing these two expressive art forms.

The exhibition is designed as a meeting between forms of expression that are perhaps perceived as solitary pursuits. It aims to highlight individual stories and shared concerns with composition, light, sound, space and language. Poems will be wall-mounted and displayed side-by-side with photographic works.

In this spirit we look forward to receiving your submissions!

  • Private View reception for participants & guests (Thurs 7th Nov)
  • Live poetry readings
  • Opportunity to sell prints & merchandise

Deadline for applications is Monday 14th October.

Peer Towers (Courtyard Arts Gallery Manager):
Are there resonances between the way photographers and poets see the world? Wasting time is integral to creativity, as is boredom, daydream and reverie.

Neither creative photography nor poetry are prominent in our vibrant popular culture, and are perhaps not widely recognised or experienced by the general public. Given the “bubble” that their practitioners may operate within, people can be innately suspicious of these art forms.

The common character and temperament may prove essentially conservative, somehow, but nevertheless photography and poetry enter the collective public imagination in ways that few other art forms do. We carry such encounters, consciously or unconsciously, through our lives as enlightening experiences.

This exhibition seeks to put together a series of oblique visual fragments and poems: two different means of creative communication, chance encounters, in the hope of conjuring and interacting, at the same time separate and together in the gallery space, maybe providing a parallel commentary, both trying to express the ineffable.