Jack Arts

Bristol Photo Festival: Dreamlines

Bristol Photo Festival is an innovative new festival that provides a platform for national, student and emerging photographers in Bristol. As well as an ongoing programme of talks, workshops and events, its programme also includes major commissions that bring the best international photography to the city. 

This year the festival invited leading photographers and writers to collaborate with the city’s residents on ‘Dreamlines’, a project that tells the stories of Bristol’s high streets, highlighting their importance to communities as ‘places of communion and congregation’. Bringing together artists with the local people in a range of workshops and creative sessions, the project placed a strong emphasis on the city’s heritage, asking ‘how the past can foster identity and belonging today’. 

The project culminated in a programme of several outdoor exhibitions, and we partnered with the festival to bring the work of two Bristol-based photographers to the streets in which they were made; Esther May-Campbell‘s powerful black and white portraits of the community of Church Road, and Lua Ribeira’s exploration of Stapleton Road, embracing her experiences of chance encounters on the high street.