Oxfordshire Artweeks is delighted to be joining forces with Oxford Festival of the Arts and Photo Oxford to present a photography exhibition, What is your Oxford? during the first week of the Artweeks festival 2025 (3-11 May).
The exhibition, at Pembroke College Art Gallery will include photographs chosen from submissions to this open call (see details below), and is open to photographers at all levels, and children too.
The three festivals are, together, asking for still photos that capture what our city means, or is, to you, or as seen through your eyes. Stills can featuring buildings, people, wildlife, objects, and/or nature; they can be representational be figurative or architectural, representational or abstract.
To kick things off, Esther Lafferty talks to fine art photographer Rob Farrands about his unexpected views of Oxford in a series of images that evoke the felt experience of rainfall. The results are a mix of rationally-descriptive images and other with a dreamlike quality as Rob stretches the possibilities of the photographic medium.
“I conceived of this project focusing on rain around eighteen months ago,” explains Rob, “as a slightly capricious response to the inundation that was to worsen and continue throughout 2024. More rain fell – and more unpredictably - from March 23 to March 24 than in previous years. It brought home the reality of climate change, the rain serving as a gentle reminder of something very serious. It felt as if the planet itself was weeping for the state of the world and yet there is still space for hope. I thought I would make the most of the inclement weather and use it to encourage others to take note of the changing weather to highlight that collectively we all need to do something before it is too late.”
“Of course, while we are seeing more rain here in Oxford – and September 2024 was the wettest month in Oxfordshire for 250 years - other parts of the earth are struggling with drought and so I began with a thought experiment: what if there was no rain; what images would communicate the feeling of rain to someone who had never experienced it?”
“Rain is motion and hard to capture as it falls. It can be seen in the consequences of its falling, in the rivulets and flowing water which may be measured and described after the event. Some of the consequences such as umbrellas may be easily apparent whilst others are not so easy to grasp.”
“I began to photograph rain as it fell and accrued on the sheets of glass that are so common in our urban landscapes. To begin with I made several images from the top deck of the bus, travelling up and down the Iffley Road in the pouring rain. These were the equivalent of an artist sketching in their notebook! I found that visualising through glass had the double effect of heightening the presence of the rain by focussing on it gathering on the glass, while also causing the background to fall out of focus and become part of the ‘bokeh’. [Bokeh is a photographic term derived from Japanese describing the aesthetic quality of blur in out-of-focus sections of an image, drawing viewers' eyes to the photo’s focal point.] The total effect was quite abstract and surreal.”
“With Magdalen Bridge, I enjoyed exploring that process of abstraction, and seeing how the rain changes familiar scenes. This made me look again at the world and encouraged me to consider the way other artists such as Manet and Renoir could also show us different worlds right in front of our eyes, leading me towards an interest in the surreal.”
“In ‘Pedestrian in the rain walking up Oxford High towards Carfax’, the pane of glass both presents the rain and creates a barrier between the photographer and the outside scene. The vivid yellow of the bus and the reflected interior lights is in marked contrast to the umbrella and person.”
As Rob moved away from photography as documentation, he has been exploring the idea of using the photograph to express his feelings in the moment that he takes the shot, to share both the ‘view’ as seen and his sensations in a single image. “This image is a good example of where I’m using abstraction to enlarge the space within which the viewer may draw upon their own felt response to complete the sense being made of the image. My hope is that the viewer may be drawn towards feeling the beauty of the falling rain as a natural elemental process.”
“Some of the works suggest a feeling of isolation on a dreary January day, and there are three layers of ‘experiences’ linked to the image - the people in the picture; my own, taking the picture, and what about the viewer? I’m asking the question whether we are all having the same experience,” muses Rob. “And, I expect, we are probably all hoping for more sunshine in 2025!”
Open call details:
Medium: still photography
Applicants should be from, or residing in Oxford/shire, or have a special connection to the city.
Both colour and monochrome are accepted.
No more than 10 images per person.
Each photograph should be titled and dated, and accompanied by a short description.
Maximum 1500px on the longest edge.
Maximum file size 5MB
Entries will be judged anonymously so please do not insert the name of the photographer in the filename. If the submission is by someone under 16, a responsible adult should e-mail, and include the age of the <16 person. Entries should be sent to: info@artsfestivaloxford.org by February 16, 2025.
