Visiting Lecturer – Alejandro Acín – It’s Not All About Making Photographs!

Instant Coffees

1st project in Bristol.
Screening shows in the basement of a pub, once a month.
Was an opportunity for people to show and talk about work.
It always generated conversation and a local community of people interested in photography emerged.

IC Visual Lab

Old Market Diaries

5 months long.
Old market is now quite a trendy place, when they started it the project it was neglected and a sort of no-go area.
There was no archive for the area.
Proposed to build up collaborative archive of the past and present with local residents.
Local residents uploaded their own pictures to the archive.
Was an organic archive, it wasn’t closed and continued to grow.
The project also consisted of detailed, multimedia, story telling works with local residents.
“The Greenscape” – by Siavash – ICVL Story Telling
“This is My Face”

Factory of Memories

Made with maritime and industrial archives in Bristol.(These are constantly being catalogued, which is useful but the archives are not active).
Turned into book titled “All Hands on Deck”
Also created a multimedia piece called “Open for Business” featuring businesses which had already closed down, it used footage from Bristol Record Office.

Activating the Archives

The Cage

Julian Baron and IC Visual Lab
“Visualising the Housing Crisis”
Respond differently than the mainstream media.
3 days to produce work – Sense of urgency to respond to something that’s actually happening.
Workshop, publication and public installation – Multi-layered project.
Once you accept you need some form of collaboration you will do better – even if this is something as simple as people viewing/critiquing your finished work.
Public installation of “The Cage” was a mural done with black and white photocopier on A4 paper, this was to give the work an honesty, strip the glam away from it and show we all can all use images.

PB Labs (Photobook Labs)

Monthly photobook club – everyone brought photobook and talked about it.
Books are an intimate experience, where as exhibitions are shared by everyone in the room
The club would usually start with 20 minute talk on classic photobook and then discussion open for everyone.
Had idea of photobook festival from this – wanted a bigger space to explore photobooks.
Did some research and there was nothing similar in the area.

Photobook Bristol

Set up in 2014.
Horizontal structure – presenters and people visiting all mixed throughout event.
Whole event held in pub.
Academic interest combined with social event.
Provided food with space to chat and interact.
Music at the end of the day.
Attended by – Amateurs, professionals, curators, students, journalist etc. of all different ages.
People flew from around Europe to attend.
Festival is on hold for 2018 but is not finished.

ICVL Studio

Design studios.
Non-profit.
Supports publication and promotion of collaborators work.
Invest % of income to community based projects developed in South-West England.
Helps projects that aren’t seeing the light gain at least some attention.
Focus on photography and design.
Started publishing in 2016.
Archive management – for institutions and private collectors.
“Shenasnameh” – Amak Mahmoodian – They discussed making a book together because she wanted to but didn’t have the resources, this was the first book that ICVL published, it was a risk as she wasn’t too well known and they had no money to publish. They worked with her to raise publishing funds and had to think about making back what they invest.
“All Quiet On The Home Front” – Colin Pantall – About relationship of father and daughter, great because there are not many male photographers exploring there feelings this openly.

The Gold Depository – Lisa Barnard