Our Freedom: Then and Now will culminate in a national exhibition in early 2026. Twenty-two photographers from the Socially Engaged Photography Network will be capturing moments from some of the powerful and diverse stories that will come from the Our Freedom programme across the UK this year. We will be sharing these photographs at an exhibition opening at the Southbank Centre in London as part of their 75th anniversary year, prior to a nationwide tour.
The Socially Engaged Photography Network, which seeks to raise the profile and diversity of community and collaboratively driven photography, is coordinated by our programme partner Open Eye Gallery. Working from the heart of Liverpool and reaching far beyond, Open Eye Gallery is one of the UK’s leading photography spaces, and the only gallery dedicated to photography and related media in the North West of England. They produce exhibitions, long-term collaborative projects, publications, festivals, and university courses – locally and worldwide.
Meet the photographers
Abby Poulson
https://www.abbypoulson.co.uk/
Abby Poulson is an artist, photographer and curator. Using an interdisciplinary photographic and lens-based process, she explores themes of land and ruralism. Abby’s work has spanned exhibitions, commissions, publications, public programmes and workshops and has engaged with young people and communities in Cymru (Wales).
Alicia Bruce
Based in Edinburgh, where she is a Teaching Fellow at Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh, Alicia Bruce is an award-winning, working-class photographer, community collaborator, educator, and activist. Her photography sits between documentary and staged imagery focusing on communities, environments and human rights. Alicia is a member of the collective Women Photograph.
Andy Fell
Andy is a photographer and informal educator, with a passion for using photography to connect people and communities. At the heart of his work is a commitment to collaboration – he believes in the transformative power of participatory photography to unite individuals and allow them to share their stories.
Drawing from his background in youth and community work, Andy brings a unique perspective to his projects, emphasising themes of identity, equality, relationships, and collective action. He aims to create spaces where people can ask questions, engage in meaningful dialogue, and raise awareness around important social issues.
Anneleen Lindsay
https://www.anneleenphotography.com/
Anneleen Lindsay is a professional freelance photographer, based in Edinburgh and shooting throughout the UK. She works mainly in portraiture, fashion, editorial and documentary photography; for individuals, exhibition, commercial clients and for publication.
Passionate about creative storytelling portraiture, collaborative projects with fellow creatives, and exploring the interplay between people and their environments, Anneleen represents communities and individuals in a positive, sensitive and vibrant way.
Anoosh Ariamehr
https://anooshphotography.myportfolio.com/communities-of-welcome
Anoosh Ariamehr is a socially engaged photographer, social activist, street photographer, and creative writer. With a background in journalism, he merges his experience in storytelling with visual art, using photography as a bridge between cultures and a tool for fostering mutual understanding.
For Anoosh, photography is a powerful and democratic medium for storytelling, connection, and community empowerment. Anoosh’s work primarily focuses on engaging with refugee and displaced communities, exploring themes of identity, belonging, and the untold stories that often go unnoticed.
Audrey Albert
https://www.mmu.ac.uk/individual-profile/audrey-albert
Audrey Albert is a Mauritian-Chagossian, visual artist and creative facilitator. Her research-led practice enables her to consider and investigate themes of mixed identities, collective memory and displacement. Audrey recently completed her first UK Solo show, Belongers, which explores how Chagossians represent themselves and reclaim their identities while navigating life in countries that have never fully felt like ‘home’. She has also just completed a socially engaged photography project with women from Chrysalis centre in St. Helens with Open Eye Gallery, as part of a forthcoming national touring exhibition ‘Fractured Landscapes-How We Heal’ produced by Jaskirt dhaliwal-boora
Carole Evans
https://www.caroleevans.co.uk/
Carole Evans is a socially engaged artist who tells stories. Originally trained in photography, lens-based media forms the basis of much of her work, and she enjoys working with communities who aren’t versed in photography to enable them to have a voice and tell their story in a creative way. In 2023 Carole was selected for the inaugural Creative Care Exchange programme organised by the Southbank Centre, working with people living with dementia in Care Homes.
Chad Alexander
https://www.chadalexander.info/
Chad Alexander is an artist from Belfast, N.Ireland. His work focuses on the impact conflict and control have upon people and their environments. Through his work and everyday surroundings he explores friction and harmonies, between place and identity.
Emma Case
Emma Case is a photographer whose work is deeply rooted in collaboration and centred around highlighting social issues, celebrating communities and promoting positive social change. Fluent in British Sign Language, Emma has worked with many cultural organisations and charities, building relationships over time and working together to share important stories in creative ways.
Jo Gane
Jo Gane is an experienced artist and educator, working within both the museum and gallery sector and in education. Her specialist area of knowledge is the practice of early photographic processes and translating these difficult techniques into engaging hands-on workshop activities.
Jo’s practice is based around photographic archives and history and she enjoys working in a socially engaged context with the public and engaging people in the process of making a photograph, particularly in hard to reach areas.
Joanne Coates
https://www.joannecoates.co.uk/
Joanne Coates is a working class visual artist using the medium of photography. She lives and works across the North East of England. Her work explores rurality, hidden histories, and inequalities relating to low income through photography, installations, and audio.
Using photography to question stories around power, identity, wealth, and poverty, Joanne was first educated in working-class communities, and then at London College of Communication (BA Hons Photography). Participation and working with communities are an important aspect of her work. She is deeply attached to places, the memories they hold and the people who inhabit them. Her work is often made from a lived experience perspective touching on class, disability and gender.
Johannah Churchill
https://www.johannahchurchill.com/
Johannah’s photographic work focuses on telling stories about people’s lives shaped by the connection to ourselves and to each other. Moving between portraiture and documentary, her practice is characterised by an emotional exploration of what it is to be human. Her central concerns are people, wellbeing, connection and belonging, continually drawing from her own life and experiences working in healthcare.
Karina Lax
Karina Lax celebrates real people, doing great things – glass-ceiling smashers and convention questioners who push at boundaries to make change.
Inspired by her Northern English roots, an education in photography, conceptual art and love of tea, she focuses on concept-driven editorial portraiture in social documentary. The results – imagery that creatively adapts to each subject whilst remaining grounded and impactful.
She is an award-winning artist and has exhibited nationally through British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Britain (2023) and National Portrait Gallery, London.
Leticia Valverdes
Brazilian Leticia Valverdes studied Fine Art and photography at London Metropolitan Uni. Her personal photographic work concentrates on interactions with people and starts with deep listening. Focusing on simple ideas, she invites exploration of identity, self-compassion and curiosity towards the body, movement and breath.
As well as her UK based work she develops photography and film projects with communities worldwide, especially in the Amazon focusing on indigenous conservation issues. She has recently worked with the BBC Planet Earth 3 series producing a story on female environmental protagonism in the region.
Marysa Dowling
https://www.marysadowling.co.uk/
Marysa Dowling is a London-based artist of Irish descent whose practice, which has been described as thoughtful and playful, centres on human behaviour, relationships, social interaction and co-creation. Working with photography and other media, Marysa develops inter-community and cross-cultural conversations and collaborations, and has cultivated creative initiatives across Cuba, India, Ireland, Lebanon, London, Los Angeles and Mexico.
Rosie Barnes
London-based Rosie Barnes is a documentary and fine art photographer with a particular interest in our relationship with the natural world. Rosie also makes work about disability/difference and community/family, and has exhibited nationally and internationally, including in China, Sweden, America, Germany and France.
Sally Barton
Sheffield-born Sally Barton is a socially engaged artist and photographer based in London. Sally’s practice explores the industrial and social history of the UK and her work has been shaped by her home in Yorkshire, from the legacies of industry to its breathtaking landscape. Exploring the relationship between land, labour and gender in her work, Sally creates an alternative archive for industrial history.
Sam Ivin
Sam Ivin is a photographic artist who explores social issues and the people connected with them. By documenting their stories and perspectives he hopes to provide a more personal, tangible understanding of them. Ivin’s process often involves hosting photography workshops, where he creates collaborative artwork with project participants.
Seema Khalique
https://www.seemakhalique.com/
London-based Seema Khalique is a photography and moving image artist. Her work explores ideas of memory, identity and personal history through documentary and portraiture. In 2019 she studied on the Magnum Intensive Documentary Photography Course at the University of the Arts London which inspired her to focus her work autobiographically. Seema’s photographic series ‘Ma’ was selected for the London Open 2022 and exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery, and in 2023 she curated ‘About Then’, a photographic exhibition that exhibited the work of five artists including her work ‘Lost in the Soot’ at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery, London.
Sophie Ellen
https://www.sophieellen.co.uk/
Sophie Ellen is an award-winning fashion and portrait photographer, published and exhibited internationally. Her work utilises a feminine aesthetic, inspired by unique beauty and strength. With a meticulous eye for detail, her work is experimental across digital, analogue and polaroid imagery. Working within womenswear, Sophie builds connections with subjects and teams; generating creative imagery for fashion editorial, look book, campaign and portraiture. Parallel to her commercial work, Sophie executes personal projects fusing her fashion aesthetic and personal stories.
Tadhg Devlin
Tadhg is a photographic artist, curator and educator based on Merseyside. After initially studying art in Dublin, he left for the UK to study photography in Cornwall. Since completing his studies, Tadhg’s work has included the social documentary area of photography for a number of groups throughout the UK who help to house the more vulnerable people in society, providing accommodation for the young, disabled and people with addiction problems. Tadhg is currently a photography lecturer, as well as pursuing projects, working collaboratively with a variety of groups.
Yaqeen Amir
https://new.express.adobe.com/webpage/PzsibQlE6WaUd
Yaqeen Amir, a passionate photographer currently studying an MA in socially engaged photography at the University of Salford, believes that in today’s world, our identity is shaped by our diverse experiences and cultures. Yaqeen works with marginalised communities, sharing their stories and experiences, fostering mutual understanding and building bridges of communication for a better future.