FORMAT International Photography Festival 2011

"RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW: exposures from the public realm"

The next full festival edition will run from 4th March to 3rd April 2011 in Derby, UK and will be organised around the theme ‘Right Here, Right Now : Exposures from the public realm’.

The festival is curated around the theme of street photography, examining the relationship that photographers and filmmakers have to it through a wide variety of approaches.

FORMAT was established in 2004, and is now one of the UK's leading international contemporary festivals of photography and related media. Our biennale programme focus is on showing new work/premiering in the UK, exposing the work of exciting emerging photographers, and creating an international meeting place audiences alongside the best established practitioners in the world to show work, exchange opportunities, skills and knowledge. The QUAD is the home of FORMAT and the high profile centre point for festival activity which takes place in Derby, UK. The festival programme consists of exhibitions, portfolio reviews, workshops, commissions, screenings, mass participation, talks, photo collectives, publications, a summer school, conference an international meeting place - and much more. In the off-years, the festival organises a professional practice programme, summerschool, conference, talks, and exhibitions..

The festival celebrates the wealth of contemporary practice in international photography. FORMAT is the place to see an incredible range of new work alongside some of the best-known practitioners in the world. FORMAT is focused on developing opportunities for audiences to see, debate, develop and engage in the best of what photography is and can be. The festival is a unique opportunity to see and engage in contemporary photography and to hear what is happening ‘right here, right now’.

RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW Exposures from the Public Realm FORMAT International Photography Festival 2011

As a preview of the FORMAT 2011 International Photography Festival, Troika Editions is hosting an exhibition “RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW: Exposures from the Public Realm.”

Opening on the 6th October 2010 at The Front Room Gallery in Clerkenwell, London this exhibition unites the work of three artists Katrin Koenning, Schinster, Kurt Tong and celebrates their distinctive approach to image making and street photography. The three artists were winners of the Troika Editions/FORMAT Exposure Award and selected from the hundreds of entries to the Exposure Open, part of FORMAT 2011.

In his series “Street Drama” Schinster from South Korea, captures images of people as they pass through a static scene over an extended period of time. Then using the multiple images he creates a composite view of the history of the space. Far removed from the idea of the decisive moment, Schinster’s distillation of time has a symmetry and humour many street photographers strive for in a single frame.

German-born Katrin Koenning, a Melbourne-based photographer creates her ‘mise-en-scène’ in the series “Thirteen; Twenty Lacuna”. Attracted to the sunlight as it appears for just 20 minutes on a street in downtown Melbourne Katrin observes the passers-by as they appear out of the shadows. Listening to their ipods or rushing to a meeting, each protagonist enters the spotlight on the stage unaware of their role in Koenning’s drama of light and dark.

In “22 Steps to the Sea”, Kurt Tong was interested in the erosion of the Texas Gulf Coast. With his back to the sea he took 22 steps inland and photographed what he found. His act of photographing the landscape attracted the attention of the local police and eventually the FBI under the new Homeland Security regulations and so he curtailed his project. A few months later he discovered on Google Maps the exact same images taken by the Google Camera Car, which had not sparked the same interest from the authorities and was now available to the billions of people surfing the web. In this exclusive set of diptychs Kurt looks at how issues surrounding security have become a concern for the documentary photographer.