Four students selected to take part in PhotoEast festival

Four young photographers have been selected to be part of an exciting new photographic project, based at Ipswich Waterfront, in May.

The Suffolk and Norfolk Collaborative Outreach project has joined with Framlingham-based arts organisation, PhotoEast to provide professional mentoring from photographic industry experts to the four students from the region.

The Suffolk and Norfolk Collaborative Outreach project is a new collaborative network aiming to help raise aspirations and encourage more students in the two counties to see University as an option by offering them the information, advice and guidance that they need to apply.

The 2016 PhotoEast Young Person’s Fellowship Programme was launched to offer a small group of 16-19 year olds the opportunity to be mentored by a photographer and to help with the PhotoEast festival which will take place in Suffolk in May, in association with University Campus Suffolk (UCS).

The four talented photographers chosen to benefit from the Fellowship are Emily Turner and Laura Bizzey from Suffolk and Dimitris Chinas and Taylor Gathercole from Norfolk.

Emily Turner is studying Art and Design at Suffolk New College.

Emily said “It’s really exciting, not like anything I have done before so I’m looking forward to it. My project idea is about combining old pictures with new pictures.”

Laura Bizzey is studying Photography at Suffolk One and said: “It’s a great honour to be chosen. I am hoping to achieve a series of portraits of disabled people to show the people in a positive light, to capture the person not the disability or health condition. I want to challenge the viewer’s perception and their ideas of what disability means. It is an amazing opportunity; I’m looking forward to exhibiting my work and benefitting from being mentored too.”

Dimitris Chinas is studying Art and Design at Norwich City College and said of his project: “I want to show two polar opposites like day and night. One will show the liveliness of an area, the other the barrenness of it. I like taking night photography a lot of the time.”

Taylor is studying Photography, also at Norwich City College.

He said “It was pleasing to think someone thinks an idea of mine is decent enough to be considered. The mentoring will help develop my idea. Mine is based around using the four main compass points.”

The students impressed the expert panel with their ambition and ideas interpreting the 2016 Festival theme ‘Of Time and Place’. They’ll be able to use the newly refurbished state-of-the-art photography facilities at University Campus Suffolk to produce the work and it will feature in the exhibition.

Adrian Evans, director of PhotoEast and London-based photo agency Panos Pictures and one of the professional mentors, said: “We were really pleased with the number of applicants for the Fellowship programme and the quality and variety of work presented. It made the selection harder but it was a problem we were more than happy to have! Over the next two months we will be helping the four students take their projects on the journey from concept through to completion while giving them the opportunity to see how the photography industry works from the inside.”

Chair of the Fellowship panel and BA (Hons) Photography course leader,Mark Edwards, said: “This is a fantastic opportunity for the four young people we selected from the region. They’ll be given the opportunity to rub shoulders with professionals working in their field and it’ll be a valuable experience for the students in their current course of study and could significantly influence and benefit their future careers. For us, it’s a chance to explore and celebrate the burgeoning photographic talent in the East Anglian region.”

Ben Driver from PhotoEast said “The mentoring schedule will be tailored to each fellow and their ideas. We have matched up each individual with the most appropriate mentor, for example Laura’s idea is focussed on portraits and disability, her mentor Eamonn McCabe is a portrait and documentary photographer and has previously captured the lives of those living with disability. The responses we had for the Fellowship prove that the East of England fosters an incredible degree of creativity and diversity, something we are keen to encourage further and develop new ways of engaging with in the future.”

The PhotoEast Festival, in association with University Campus Suffolk, will take place from May 24 - June 25 2016.

For more information visit www.photoeast.co.uk