LONDON.- World-class photography takes over London’s most celebrated venues, large and small, for the festival’s inaugural year. The London Street Photography Festival launched this summer to celebrate the time-honoured genre. An exciting new addition to London’s cultural calendar, the festival, 1st-31st July 2011, features curated exhibitions alongside a diverse events programme bringing together leading international artists past and present.

Highlights include the first UK exhibition of the incredible archives of mysterious Chicago street photographer Vivian Maier at the German Gymnasium, as well as a newly discovered body of work by previously unknown British photographer Walter Joseph - a gritty portrait of post-war London at the British Library.

Photofusion presents rare perspectives by leading female street photographers from around the world, whilst the voyeuristic Seen/Unseen showcases new work by award winning photographers George Georgiou and Mimi Mollica, using the London bus as a vehicle to explore an unknowing public. Leading street photography collective In-Public will see two of its celebrated members, Nick Turpin and Nils Jorgensen, unite in a joint show presenting work from England and France at St. Pancras International.

The festival also presents the first ever International Street Photography Award, alongside a student category, celebrating the best work undertaken today from thousands of submissions received from around the world.

Through a varied programme of exhibitions, talks, workshops and interactive events, the festival provides a unique insight into the field of street photography from the industry’s leading practitioners and experts. In an exploratory talk at the V&A by Curator of Photographs Susanna Brown, visitors will be able to examine up close some of the collection’s most fascinating acquisitions, including original prints by Henri Cartier Bresson, Gary Winogrand and Diane Arbus.

A range of practical and creative workshops and interactive events are led by eminent practitioners in the field, including the Olympic Photo-Cycle with Toby Smith, and David Gibson’s photo-walks. Courses vary in duration from two to five days, and include the extraordinary London to Paris Street Photography Workshop with In-Public founder Nick Turpin.

The festival launched with 4 exhibitions that opened on 30th June, at the British Library, and at the German Gymnasium. The festival confirms additional venues and artists regularly.

Exhibitions

Vivian Maier: A Life Uncovered
Chicago nanny Vivian Maier died in 2009, leaving behind an incredible archive of over 100,000 negatives, prints, and home-made films only discovered shortly before her death.

Depicting the streets of Chicago with her unique and stylistic candidness, Maier incidentally recorded some of the most interesting marvels and peculiarities of urban America in the second half of the twentieth century.

This first UK exhibition showcases 48 framed prints, in both black and white and colour. A selection of Maier’s fascinating silent films are also featured.

Location: German Gymnasium, Pancras Road, NW1 2TB
Dates: 1st July – 24th July

The Story of Vivian Maier, a talk by John Maloof, the man who first discovered Maier’s incredible body of work and brought it to the public eye, takes place at the National Portrait Gallery 1st July

Walter Joseph: Street Markets of London in the 1940s
Walter Joseph’s recently discovered photographs present a unique perspective of postwar London from the viewpoint of a German refugee.

Joseph (1922-2003), born in Darmstadt to an Orthodox Jewish couple, fled Germany in 1939 and came to England, where he remained a dedicated amateur and semiprofessional photographer throughout his life.

This exhibition features Joseph’s fascinating images of London markets and street traders taken 1947-48. Recently acquired by the British Library, the festival presents this extraordinary collection to the public for the very first time.

Location: British Library, 96 Euston Road, NW1 2DB
Dates: 1st – 31st July

Entente Cordiale: Images from France and England by Nick Turpin and Nils Jorgensen

Entente Cordiale, a joint show by two leading In-Public photographers, Nick Turpin and Nils Jorgensen, combines street photography from the UK and France at London’s gateway to Europe, St. Pancras International.

This exhibition features Nick Turpin’s recent work The French with Nils Jorgensen’s street photography taken in the UK. Situated on the concourse of St. Pancras International, visitors will see large scale images of France as they ‘walk towards France,’ and images of the UK as they leave France ‘arriving in London.’

Location: St. Pancras International, Pancras Road, NW1 2QP
Dates: 1st – 31st July

On Street Photography: A Woman’s Perspective
Five leading female photographers reveal their pioneering art within a notoriously male dominated genre in an extraordinary group show.

Inspired by the possibilities of the public domain, participating artists are: Anahita Avalos, Polly Braden, Tiffany Jones, Johanna Neurath and Ying Tang. Though all are unique in style and approach, all unite in providing a thought-provoking view on modern day life across the globe.

Whether depicting the poetry of Mexican street life, or the bustle of London’s Square Mile, these artists present perspectives and issues surrounding identity, place, order and disorder with fascinating immediacy.

Location: Photofusion, 17a Electric Lane, SW9 8LA
Dates: 10th June – 22nd July

Seen/ Unseen: George Georgiou and Mimi Mollica
Award-winning photographers George Georgiou and Mimi Mollica take a look at the Londoner’s journey from two very different perspectives. Using the London bus as the means to penetrate private lives within public spaces, the artists capture their subjects completely unaware.

Mollica’s new work Bus Stories focuses on a hidden view of London’s bus passengers, questioning the ethics of public surveillance through images that are both eerie and yet strikingly familiar. Georgiou's ongoing project Invisible: London surveys the diverse topography and migration in London through the windows of buses – just as the city becomes increasingly diverse, so the movement of people continues to change both the urban landscape and the community within it.

The exhibition also includes a trail of images on bus shelters throughout Camden.

Location: Collective Gallery, 15 Camden High Street, NW1 7JE
Dates: 7th - 17th July

Polish Perspectives
To celebrate Poland’s EU presidency from 1st July 2011, the London Street Photography Festival presents work from the streets of London by three Polish photographers who have lived and worked in the city.

Witold Krassowski (b. 1956) moved to London in the late 1980s where his photographic talent was spotted by Colin Jacobsen, then picture editor of the Independent Magazine, who published his photographs and encouraged him to give up his day job (painting houses) and focus on photography. Krassowski carried out 18 photographic assignments for the Independent, his foreign eye bringing a fresh and witty vision to his stories.

Damian Chrobak and Zbigniew Osiowy are members of a newly established street photography group ‘un-posed’ who aim to “shape the artistic conscience of the audience in Poland as well as promote the achievements of Polish street photographers abroad”.

Location: Swiss Cottage Central Library, 88 Avenue Road, London NW3 3HA
Dates: 8th – 17th July

Adventures in the Valley: Polly Braden and David Campany
The River Lea runs from the Thames in east London up to Hertfordshire. Once a busy commercial waterway, it is now a nature reserve, but still includes industrial estates, sports centres, new homes and council estates.

Working together, Polly Braden and David Campany move between observational documentary and experimental stagings. There are poetic snapshots and theatrical incidents, naturalistic portraits and semi-fictional enactments. The photographs reflect the place but also the processes and conventions of documentary photography.

The photographs were made between January 2003 and July 6, 2005 - the day it was announced London would host the 2012 Olympic Games and build its key facilities in the lower Lea Valley. The present architectural and cultural metamorphosis of King’s Cross echoes recent changes in the Lea Valley, creating an intriguing backdrop to the exhibition.

Location: Minnie Weisz Studio, 123 St Pancras Road, NW1 1UN
Dates:1st – 17th July

Street Photography Now
The London Street Photography Festival in partnership with the Third Floor Gallery, Cardiff is pleased to present Street Photography Now – the exhibition – its first showing in England.

From Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue to London’s Oxford Street, from Mexico City to Moscow, via Bombay and Bournemouth, Street Photography Now features the work of a truly global group of emerging and established photographers working the streets today.

Images on display are taken from the book of the same name published by Thames & Hudson which brings together the work of an internationally acclaimed roster of artists including Martin Parr, Bruce Gilden, Matt Stuart and Joel Meyerowitz.

Location: 18 Exmouth Market, London, EC1R 4QE
Dates: 7th – 17th July

No Man’s Land: Mishka Henner
No Man’s Land by Mishka Henner explores the margins of our urban and rural European environment as experienced by what appear to be women soliciting sex, all captured by Google Street View cameras. Occupying liminal spaces in post-industrial and rural settings, the focus on these women also casts a critical eye on the Street View project itself and on photography’s indelible link to voyeurism and surveillance.

As it roams the world capturing trillions of images indexed only according to location, the unauthored and mechanical function of the Google Street View car also challenges a vocabulary and grammar of documentary photography often associated with notions of authorship, authenticity and technical craft.

Location: Hotshoe Gallery, 29–31 Saffron Hill, Farringdon, London, EC1N 8SW
Dates: 13th – 26th July

London Street Photography Festival runs 1st - 31st July at various venues across London . For more information visit www.londonstreetphotographyfestival.org.