Frome’s photography festival returns with ‘inEquality’ focus

Photo|Frome returns to our town in April 2025, bringing with it an inclusive and thought-provoking perspective on photography. This year’s theme is ‘inEquality’, shedding light through contemporary imagery and is also a chance for local and student photographers to showcase their work. The festival broadly runs from 5th- 27th April.

All Photo|Frome exhibitions are free to visit, and in various locations across town, so make sure to check each one for details.

Check out the list of exhibitions below:

Frome Museum: open Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 3pm, and Independent Market Sundays. Late opening Thursdays until 5pm.

11th March – 31st May

Trinity, Part 1: The Great Clearance, 1962-68

This is the first part of a two-part exhibition exploring the history of Frome’s Trinity area from the earliest times to the slum clearances of the 1960s. Part 1: The Great Clearance examines the plans for large-scale demolition of historic properties in the 1960s — properties once dismissed as slums but now recognised as an irreplaceable part of the town’s heritage.

Rook Lane Chapel: 10am – 4pm 

6th April – 27th April

Susan Meiselas

Photo|Frome is delighted to be showing a selection of Susan’s ‘Nicaragua’ work. Still considered by some to be her signature work, these startling colour photographs of the lead-up to the overthrow of the Somoza regime and subsequent Sandinista victory were widely distributed in the international press and published in the 1981 book ‘Nicaragua’.

Joss Barratt

Joss Barratt is a professional photographer primarily shooting stills for the film and television industry. Originally a photojournalist, his quick eye for storytelling pictures blends a personal approach with the particular demands of film sets and varied commercial assignments.

Jim Brogden

Jim Brogden’s urban landscape project in Bradford looks at the city through a sociological perspective, focusing on the visual contrasts found in marginalised areas where people have to balance their private and public lives. The goal was to capture the mysterious character of these places and the people living there without pushing a specific political message.

Nick Hedges

Nick’s project with Birmingham Housing Trust is an exhibition about the city’s badly housed, setting the tone for his life’s work on social issues. Nick also photographed Shelter’s ‘National Campaign for the Homeless’, helping gain significant public attention to the problem, and establishing Shelter as a national voice still very active to this day.

Tish Murtha

Tish set out to document ‘marginalised communities from the inside’ in Newcastle. Unlike other photographers who came to document poverty in the region, Tish lived it as the third of ten children of Irish descent, brought up in a council house in Elswick in Newcastle.

Roland Ramanan

Roland Ramanan is a London based documentary photographer with a background in music and education. In 2012 he started a long term documentary project on the issue-affected group of people who gravitate towards Gillett Square. The square was derelict and underdeveloped for years until, in the 1990s, it became an experiment in urban regeneration.

Paul Seawright

5th – 27th April

Tim Smith

Tim’s project ‘In The World But Not Of It’ provides the most comprehensive, contemporary and nuanced view of the Hutterite colonies – delving into complex decisions at the heart of the everyday. His documentation offers a glimpse into the continuously negotiated sites of Hutterite life.

Evgeniya Strygina

In ‘Home from Home’, Evgeniya tells the stories of people who were forced to leave their homes when the war in Ukraine began in February 2022. The stories presented in the project demonstrate the complexity and reveal the personal toll of geopolitical tensions, as families are torn apart and lives are uprooted – both for Ukrainians and Russians.

Whittox Gallery @ RISE: 10am – 4pm (closed on Sundays)

5th – 27th April

Sujata Setia

Sujata combines traditional artistic interventions and photography to call attention to the boundary of cultural imperialism, a boundary marked not by the social exile of the ‘other’, but by the ordinary, the ever-present yet trivialised exile formed by prejudices, procedures and activities so fundamental as to not even be noticed.

Sujata’s series ‘A Thousand Cuts’ studies the patterns of domestic abuse through personal narratives of survivors, who receive the dignity of taking centre stage in this project.

Valentina Sinis

‘Were Afghan Women to Unveil their Tales’ is a project that gives a close and respectful look into Afghan women’s lives, showing what they go through in a difficult reality. Since the Taliban took control again, over seventy rules have been made to restrict women’s access to education, work, healthcare, and freedom to move. These limits affect women everywhere, from public spaces to their own homes, where they face daily restrictions on movement, opportunities and even small decisions. Yet, Afghan women continue to show incredible strength.

Station Gallery: 10am – 4pm

5th – 27th April

Open Call Finalists

Successful entries received from across the world, transcending borders, photographic approach, and technical interpretations result in a distinctly varied and thought-provoking exhibition that forms a worthy new addition to the festival line-up.

Silk Mill Studios: 10am – 4pm

15th – 29th April

Boomsatsuma BA Students

Students from the Photography & Print BA at Boomsatsuma, Bristol will exhibit a selection of pieces of work co-curated by Amin Yousefi (Photo|Frome’s 2023 student awards winner). This exhibition will represent varied responses looking to interrogate the festival’s theme of inEquality.

Frome Library: 9am – 5pm (closed on Sundays)

5th – 26th April

Falmouth BA Students

InProgress: Serving as an evocative and thought-provoking group exhibition, InProgress showcases diverse perspectives on inEquality by emerging student photographers on the BA Commercial Photography programme at The Institute of Photography, Falmouth University.

Frome College Students

Students from Frome College will exhibit a varied selection of images and photographic process on the festival’s inEquality theme.

Roseberry Road Studios: 11am – 5pm (closed Mondays – Wednesdays)

10th – 27th April

inEquality Open Call

Photo|Frome is delighted to be collaborating with Roseberry Road Studios, Bath, in inviting photographers to submit work exploring the theme of INEQUALITY. Selected pieces will be showcased in a thought-provoking exhibition at our gallery.

Outside Frome Library

5th – 26th April

Joanne Coates

Joanne Coates, a working-class visual artist based in the North East of England, uses photography to explore rurality, hidden histories, and income-based inequalities. Educated in working-class communities before attending London College of Communications (BA Hons Photography), Joanne values community engagement as central to her practice.

River House Café Gallery: 9am – 5pm (10am – 4pm on Sundays)

5th – 27th April

Water Aid

Around 700 million people (that’s almost 1 in 10) in the world do not have access to a reliable source of safe clean water. It means they have no choice but to collect dirty water for drinking, cooking and cleaning. It often means a long walk to a river or stream to collect water – work usually carried out by women and girls who often, as a result miss out on schooling. The lack of clean water can lead to the spread of diseases like cholera. It holds back whole communities.

Projects Store and Kitchen Gallery: 8:30am – 4pm (9:30am – 3:30pm on Sundays)

5th – 27th April

Empowerment

Projects is staging an exhibition of photos of disempowered communities and refugees from a Frome-based photo collector.

La Strada Café Gallery: 8:30am – 6pm (closed on Sundays)

5th – 26th April

Frome Wessex Photographic

Frome Wessex Photographic, one of the region’s most successful and longstanding camera groups, offer an interpretation of the festival’s inEquality theme.

Riverside Walk: (outdoors, from Frome Canoe Club to Welshmill Weir)

5th – 27th April

Gideon Mendel

Working with both stills and video, Gideon Mendel’s intimate style of image-making and long-term commitment to socially engaged projects has earned international recognition. Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1959, he began photographing in the 1980s, during the final years of apartheid.

Sarah Palmer

Sarah Palmer is based in Toronto, Canada. Her work straddles the realm of journalism and fine art, questioning the conventional limits that both of these worlds hold for the viewer and artist alike. ‘Wish You Were Here’ explores vacation culture amidst the climate crisis, and how it plays, often unconsciously, into what’s known as last-chance tourism.

Victoria Park: (outdoors)

5th – 27th April

Faces of Frome

Faces of Frome is an ongoing project documenting the diversity of the people of Frome in partnership with The Frome Independent market.

Permanent residents and those visiting this vibrant community are invited to take part. The photographs form part of a living archive, added to with each edition of Photo|Frome festival, building a unique record of the community. Photographs were taken by BA students from Boomsatsuma, Bristol. Students of Frome College managed the participants.

Check Photo|Frome’s website for more details.