pHOTO OXFORD 2025 IN 10 IMAGES
Henri Kisielewski, Eye from the series Non Fiction
Truth in Photography is a complex issue and at Photo Oxford 2025 we have tried to tackle it from many angles. Our aim is to make you think, to question and to see things in a new light. Every photographer and every image has a story to tell; we hope these 10 images will give you a sense of what the festival offers and the subjects it addresses.
For the full programme, see our Exhibitions and Events pages, or download the printed programme.
1. PHOTOGRAPHY AS EVIDENCE
Phil polglaze
alexandra park 6 november 1990
Phil Polglaze’s Bog Jobs series sits at the uneasy intersection of art, justice, and queer history - a stark visual record of evidence of police entrapment during and after the Section 28 era in Britain. Between 1979 and 1996, Polglaze was commissioned by defence lawyers to photograph public toilets where gay men had been arrested under charges of gross indecency.
2. PHOTOGRAPHY AS PROPAGANDa
EDMUND CLARK AND CROFTON BLACK
COSMOPOLEMOS
Edmund Clark and Crofton Black’s new body of work Cosmopolemos employs soft-focus photography taken from the US Defence Dept free image library to illustrate their encyclopaedia of US Defence Department’s $6.5 trillion’s spending between 9/11 and the departure from Afghanistan.
3. PHOTOGRAPHY AS DEVOTION
PADDY SUMMERFIELD
MOTHER AND FATHER
Paddy Summerfield’s series Mother and Father is a moving journal of the final years of a sixty-year marriage. For ten years, from 1997 to 2007 Paddy Summerfield photographed his parents, reflecting on the bond between them, which even the effects of Alzheimers could not break.
4. PHOTOGRAPHY AS INTROSPECTION
HEATHER AGYEPONG
ONLY PINO
Heather Agyepong’s Only Pino turns the camera inward, using self-portraiture to confront the hidden parts of the psyche inspired by Carl Jung’s concept ofthe Shadow. Through layered imagery and deep blue tones, the triptych transforms photography into a space of introspection, revealing identity as fluid, conflicted, and in continual negotiation.
5. PHOTOGRAPHY AS POETRY
CAROLYN QUARTERMAINE
Chateau Staircase 2018
Caroline Quartermaine writes ‘I’m always thinking of the Monet lilies and how, the closer you get, you lose the form and get lost in the brush strokes - the intimacy and scale is very poetic…my images are a contemplation of a fragile moment that’s eternally suspended…brought up close so that it can be examined. I only have this one chance to trap the fragile beauty of the moment…”
6. PHOTOGRAPHY AS MATERIALITY
JAMES TYLOR
The Trap (from Karta [The Island of the Dead) series, 2016
James Tylor’s series Karta (Island of the Dead) depicts sites where Aboriginal peoples were killed by European settlers during the nineteenth century. Tylor transforms the daguerreotype into both image and wound - the scratched surface physically enacts the violence it commemorates. By merging historical and digital techniques, Tylor turns the photograph’s materiality into a site of remembrance, where erasure becomes a powerful act of witness.
7. PHOTOGRAPHY AND PAIN
MARYSA DOWLING
eLLEN, FROM WHAT WE CARRY
Marysa Dowling explores how photography can make the invisible experience of pain visible. Through collaborative image-making, writing and storytelling, participants living with chronic pain transform their inner struggles into visual expression - turning suffering into a means of being seen, understood and believed.
8. PHOTOGRAPHY AND FAITH
ROB JUDGES
DIWALI
Rob Judges documents faith in contemporary Britain at a time when religious belief is in decline, portraying practitioners from many faiths in moments of quiet reflection and devotion. Through these everyday scenes, the work reveals how belief persists, not in spectacle, but in the stillness, repetition and humanity of ordinary spiritual life.
9. PHOTOGRAPHY AND AI
HALEY MORRIS-CAFIERO
IDEAL EMPLOYEE HIGH HARDWORKING SCORE
What does the Ideal Employee Look Like? uses a version of AI-powered employment assessment software alongside performance to expose algorithmic bias in hiring practices, where facial features like eye size or cheekbone prominence are incorrectly linked to personality traits and job suitability. Haley Morris-Cafiero manipulates her face during mock interviews to achieve perfect scores across twenty personality categories, then photographs the distorted result as a satirical corporate headshot, critiquing how AI perpetuates discrimination in recruitment.
10. PHOTOGRAPHY AND HUMANITY
OLIVIA ARTHUR
TELENOID
In Murmurings of the Skin Olivia Arthur examines what it means to be human by exploring our physical embodiment - how we inhabit and feel within our own skin - alongside our increasing use of technology to repair, enhance, or potentially replace our bodies. The project questions how integrating man-made elements affects our sense of self and humanity, while contemplating our future coexistence with advanced robotics and humanoid beings.