Firecracker is pleased to announce its first exhibition, featuring projects which explore the consequences of bringing highly personal work into the public realm.

Firecracker is an online support network, which showcases one documentary photographic project by a European female photographer every month and organises a regular series of related promotional and networking events. This will be the first time Firecracker has featured a physical display of its photographers' work, and the exhibition will explore notions of identity, culture,  family and immersive participation.

Firecracker presents: Lives of Others
Five female photographers divulge personal stories in this exhibition, engaging visitors through these public displays of their highly sensitive work.

Exhibiting artists include Celine Marchbank, Natasha Carauna, Briony Campbell and Laura Hynd, each of whom have developed inward-looking, personally reflective projects that have consequently been disseminated in the public sphere. These photographers are not simply observers, but also active participants in their unconventional approaches to self-portraiture, bravely allowing their audiences a glimpse into their private lives and the opportunity to empathise, relate and perhaps even understand.

Each of the five projects examines ideas around identity, culture, family and immersive participation. In ‘The Dad Project’and ‘Tulip’both Briony Campbell and Celine Marchbank use their powerful and moving photography to record the pain and devastation of losing a parent. Léonie Hampton’s ‘In The Shadow of Things’is the product of months spent clearing her mother’s home of the clutter collected over years battling with OCD. Laura Hynd’s self portrait project ‘The Letting Go’ questions Hynd’s perception of herself and experiments with loss of control and inhibition. Natasha Caruana’s ‘The Other Woman’is a visual confession of Caruana’s life with a married man, and the exploration of other ‘other’ women who were experiencing the same.

Firecracker Photographic Grant

The exhibition coincides with the launch of the Firecracker Photographic Grant, which will be awarded in autumn 2012 to support a European female photographer and aid the completion of a documentary photography project. The grant will be judged by a panel of experienced industry professionals, including David Birkitt of Magnum Photos & DMB Media, Jessica Crombie of Save the Children, Shannon Ghannam of Reuters Pictures, Simon Roberts, renowned British photographer, Francesca Sears of Panos Pictures and Diane Smyth of the British Journal of Photography.

Applications for the grant will open 9th July 2012.
See www.fire-cracker.org for further details.

Biographies

Briony Campbell
Briony Campbell? was born in London, where she has been a freelance photographer since 2006. In 2009, Campbell graduated from London College of Communication's MA in Documentary Photography with distinction. That year she made The Dad Project, the story of losing her dad to cancer. The process of creating this work, and the public's response to it, represented a formative chapter for her both personally and professionally. The project was exhibited, published and acclaimed internationally.  In 2011 it was awarded the Bar Tur Photography Award.?? She is currently shooting a long term project about the relationship between contemporary Britain and Africa, focusing firstly on capturing the lives of mixed nationality couples.

Campbell’s work has been published in Guardian Weekend Magazine, The Observer Magazine, The Sunday Times Magazine, The Independent, The Financial Times, El Mundo, Die Zeit. Recent clients include The Photographer’s Gallery, London’s Southbank Centre and The National Health Service.
www.brionycampbell.com

Natasha Caruana
Born in 1983 Caruana is a practising artist, lecturer of photography and founding director of the London based studioSTRIKE artists studios. She graduated with an MA in photography at the Royal College of Art in 2008 and is currently a lecturer of photography at the University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, in Surrey. Caruana’s own art practice is grounded in research, drawing from archives, the internet and personal narratives. Her series ‘The Other Woman’ and ‘Married Man’ document love and its place in everyday life. Caruana’s works have been exhibited in various group and solo exhibitions in the United States, Poland, Germany and Saudi Arabia. Her work is held in the collections of the British Library, Woman’s Library in the UK and the Laguna Art Museum and The Kinsey Institute in the United States. Her work was shortlisted for the National Magazine Awards in 2007 and the Deutsche Bank Pyramid prize in 2008. In 2010 Caruana was named as the one to watch in the Royal Photographic Society Journal, featured in the British Journal of Photography and selected by the Humble Arts Foundation as one of 18 leading female art photographers working in the UK.
www.natashacaruana.com

Leonie Hampton
After graduating in Art History, Hampton continued her studies in Photojournalism at the London College of Communications.  She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Paul Huf Award 2009 and the ‘F’ Award for concerned photography 2008. Her work is part of the permanent collection of MEP (Maison Européenne de la Photographie) and Foam Museum, Amsterdam. She has been exhibited internationally including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Palazzo Delle Esposizione in Rome and Foam Museum Amsterdam. She co-founded and runs Still/Moving, a not-for-profit organisation that runs photography and film workshops and seminars in London. In May 2011 Contrasto published her first book In the Shadow of Things. Leonie Hampton is currently represented by the Kahmann Gallery, Amsterdam
www.leoniehampton.com

Laura Hynd
Laura Hynd is a Scottish photographer who moved to England at an early age. Hynd attended Art College and completed a degree in Graphic Arts and Design. She worked as a Creative Designer before moving to London to work as a photo editor for several years. She left to pursue her love of making photographs in 2005. Hynd's approach is natural, honest and organic with a twist of sumptuousness and humour, all of which reflects her personality. She concentrates on people and the living landscape. Hynd has photographed for editorial clients including Telegraph Magazine, Conde Nast Traveller, Stella, Seven, Independent Magazine, Independent Sunday Review, and Countryfile, amongst others.
www.laurahynd.com

Celine Marchbank
Celine is a London-based documentary photographer, and graduate of London College of Communication's MA in Photojournalism & Documentary Photography. Her work concentrates on stories close to home; she likes to find the beauty in the small details of everyday life. Her interest is in examining what is taking place in her own local area rather than in a distant unfamiliar place with which she has little personal connection.

Celine's work has been shortlisted for a variety of awards, including the European Publishers Award, Deutsche Bank Award, Lucie Foundation Scholarship, and was a finalist of the International Photography Award Emergentes DST.

Her work has been shown at a variety of places including the HotShoe Gallery, Proud Central Gallery, Encontros Da Imagem Festival in Portugal, screened at Arles Photography Festival in France, and this year she took part in the Open Here exhibition at the Hereford Photography Festival where she won the exhibition commission to create a new project for a solo show at next year's festival. She lives and work in London, where she is pursuing British-based personal projects, while also undertaking commercial and editorial freelance commissions.
www.celinemarchbank.com

BOOKS BY EXHIBITED ARTISTS

NATASHA CARUANA

Basics Creative Photography 03: Behind the Image: Research in Photography [Paperback]

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  © Laura Hynd
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  © Celine Marchbank
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  © Natasha Caruara
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  © Briony Campbell
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  © Leonie Hampton