Photo Fringe

Photo Fringe returns from October 2–31 across Brighton & Hove, Newhaven and Portsmouth with lens-based projects springing up this autumn alongside the Photoworks Festival.

A spokesman promised “the most expansive photo festival in the UK, spanning across the south coast.

“This year, Photo Fringe returns with a refreshed focus on the grassroots values that have shaped the festival since 2003: artist-led participation, experimentation, community connection and self-curated exhibitions. For 2026, photographers, artists, collectives, curators, community groups and organisers were invited to take part and submit expressions of interest with their proposals for exhibitions. These could take place in all kinds of venues, in galleries, community venues, cafés, seafront spaces, empty shops and unexpected sites across the region. This year's festival celebrates the creative potential of working collectively.”

Exhibitions will include:

“Ghosts in the Field is Murray Ballard’s long-term photographic exploration of Salento, southern Italy, where ancient traditions exist in contrast with ecological crisis and modernity. At its heart is the devastation caused by Xylella, a bacterium that has killed millions of olive trees and transformed a landscape shaped by olive cultivation for centuries. Made over more than a decade, the work explores the interconnected effects of environmental loss, generational change, migration and tourism, and considers how landscape, culture and people continually reshape one another. Phoenix Art Space, October 2-31.

“Everything is Never Enough is a group exhibition of work by artists Holly Birtles, Rachel K Gillies, Fergus Heron, Åsa Johannesson and Martin Seeds. Specifically derived for Photo Fringe 2026, this work exposes the processes behind research-based art practices that have photography at their core. The materials on display are presented not simply as evidence of process but as works of enquiry in their own right. Bringing together photographic works, sketchbook materials, failed images, test strips and research data, the exhibition asks how and why artists do what they do. Phoenix Art Space, Project Space. October 21-25.

“Echoed Scenery is a duo photography exhibition by South Korean artist Anbuh and Bulgarian artist Vera Hadzhiyska which brings together photographic works and newly produced publications developed through an ongoing international collaboration that explores cultural exchange, memory, and shared visual language between Bulgaria and South Korea. The exhibition represents the culmination of an ongoing photographic dialogue between the two artists, combining existing and new work across two interconnected series —Silent Dialogues and Echoed Scenery. Through parallel visual narratives shaped by their everyday surroundings, the artists explore how familiarity, nostalgia, and photography itself can bridge geographical and cultural distance. Refectory Gallery, University of Portsmouth, Eldon Building.

“LULL is an evolving sensory portrait of Brighton by Laura El-Tantawy, told through its most mischievous feathery resident and the rhythms of a seaside town I have come to call home. A cry overhead. Wings cutting across the sky. The pull and retreat of the sea. Pebbles turning beneath water. Wind, weather, voices. These sounds repeat until they become so familiar that we almost stop hearing them. October 2-16 – Unit 6, Duke Lane, Brighton, BN1 1BG.

“A group exhibition by Brighton & Hove Camera Club explores the feedback loop theme. Each member will display work that, to them, best illustrates the meaning.”

The festival’s Collectives’ Hub will return to Phoenix Art Space, continuing its focus on collective practice and collaboration. The collectives will be selected from an open call by Lucy Day (executive director, Phoenix Art Space), Laurence Hill (curator, Phoenix Art Space), Rebecca Drew (chair, Photo Fringe), Ricardo Reverón Blanco (producer, Photo Fringe) and Arpita Shah (artist). This exhibition will respond to Phoenix’s 2026 theme, Future Histories, which encourages us to explore the ways in which the past continues to inform, configure, and sometimes overshadow the present, and compels us to consider how our actions today will shape the history of tomorrow.”