News / 15 Apr 2025
Photography students collaborate with Leodis and Leeds Libraries for exhibition
BA (Hons) Photography
Final year BA (Hons) Photography students have curated an exhibition in response to a brief set in collaboration with the Leodis Archive and Leeds Libraries.
The Leodis Archive is a collection of over 70,000 images of Leeds based at Leeds Central Library and online. The photographs housed in the archive show historic scenes and subjects of the local area.
Students were invited to explore the archive to find a theme or subject they would like to explore for a creative project. Choosing images from the archive, the students then went on to create their own responses, evidencing the connection between research and practice.
The BA (Hons) Photography students submitted a series of photographs, along with a short description of their concept and how it developed from their archival research. These were then reviewed by Leodis Arhive, and six students were chosen to exhibit at Leeds Central Library.
The resulting exhibition ‘Within our Grasp’ was curated by the six photographers selected by Leodis: Adam Kingston, Danella Bray, Daniel Jeffries, Josie Chaplow, Ola Figas and Ruby Lee. The exhibition bridged the past and present through visual storytelling, creating work that reimagines the landscape of Leeds.
“This gave us a great opportunity to independently curate a show outside of university whilst still having the help of all the facilities the University offers. I think we all gained an impressive amount of experience from this exhibition that we can apply to our future careers. It left me personally feeling a lot more confident in curating, designing and printing an exhibition.”
Daniel Jeffries, BA (Hons) Photography student
Whilst the students worked collaboratively with everyone taking a role in curating the show, Adam Kingston took the lead in managing the relationship between the photographs and Leodis, ensuring the students kept to deadline and had access to the materials needed to make the show a success.