Photo North Festival #7 at Carriageworks Theatre
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Photo North Festival #7
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Returning to Leeds for its seventh edition, Photo North Festival has quietly become one of the UK’s most distinctive photography gatherings, focussed on spectacle and more on community. Held at The Carriageworks Theatre over three tightly packed days, it brings internationally recognised photographers into conversation with emerging voices, students and audiences who are there to look closely, listen carefully and talk things through.
The programme leans into photography’s capacity for social documentary. Across a number of exhibitions, Photo North #7 brings together work shaped by climate change, conflict, identity, maternal mental health and care – presented as lived realities. This sits alongside long-term, reflective projects, including a major curated exhibition by the Leeds International African Arts Festival.
Highlights include Jaywick Sands Happy Club, a community-made project that resists the familiar narratives imposed on one of the UK’s most stigmatised places, and Smoke and Mirrors by award-winning photojournalist Seamus Murphy, which charts the West Bank city of Nablus across two decades to reflect on occupation and endurance.
This Is Also Motherhood, created by Carolyn Mendelsohn with the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, offers an intimate portrait of maternal mental health, while Leeds International African Arts Festival curate Earthwise – a vibrant, outward-looking exhibition foregrounding African photography, creativity and renewal.
Beyond the exhibitions, talks, screenings and portfolio reviews unfold continuously, with a strong educational focus on Friday and the Channel 4 Senior Pictures Team on hand for career conversations and drop-ins. And a lively market and bar space encourages slower exchanges – between artists, professionals and curious newcomers alike.
Contained within a single venue, Photo North Festival #7 is an accessible way to advance your understanding of the medium, whether you’re a professional photographer or a keen amateur. It’s a festival built on equality, informality and mutual support – serious about photography, without ever losing sight of the people behind it.
