New Focus: photography commissions for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture
Five photographers have been selected to capture a portrait of contemporary Bradford.
Published: March 20, 2025
Author: Impressions Gallery
New Focus: Bradford Young Curators have commissioned five photographers for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture
In collaboration with the team at Impressions Gallery, young people’s collective New Focus have selected five photographers to capture a portrait of contemporary Bradford. These commissions are a key element of the gallery’s landmark projects for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture. The resulting work will be showcased in an exhibition that explores Bradford’s rich multicultural history, opening in September 2025.
The commissions have been awarded to three Bradford-based photographers, Laura Mate, Nathan McGill and Karol Wyszynski, and two national photographers, Anselm Ebulue and Tori Ferenc. The photographers are capturing portraits of families across the Bradford District, interpreting “family” in the broadest sense. Their resulting photographs will share stories from a broad social spectrum of communities and groups, celebrating both the families we are born into and the families we choose.
The selected photographers bring diverse perspectives to the project, including those with lived experience of migration, others who focus on the rituals and resilience of community life, and those born and raised in Bradford with deep connections to local communities. Their work will capture intergenerational and multicultural groups, telling universal stories of identity, belonging, and home. Through these photographs, they aim to spark open conversations about how our past shapes and inspires the future.
The five photographers will begin working with New Focus and Impressions Gallery in March, capturing their new photographs throughout the spring and summer of 2025. Their work will be displayed at Impressions Gallery starting 13 September 2025, alongside a collection of community-sourced archive family photographs that offer a personal view of Bradford’s past through the eyes of those who have lived its history.
The commissions and exhibition are part of a wider project being led by New Focus: Bradford Young Curators, a group of ten young creatives from Bradford, growing their curatorial skills throughout 2025, under the guidance of Impressions Gallery and a cohort of mentors, including artists, curators and archivists.
About Bradford Young Curators
Bradford Young Curators is part of Impressions Gallery’s award-winning New Focus programme.
At the heart of the project is the handover of curatorial control from Impressions to the collective, including the commission of new photographic work for an major exhibition in autumn 2025. New Focus are also collaborating with local communities to unearth Bradford’s cherished family photos to create a new online family album and archive.
To learn more about the Young Curators, check out one of the members’ blogs detailing their recent trip to London.