Our projects so far

One of the main reasons for the existence of the BPPA is to promote news photography and one of the best ways to do that is to give pictures a chance to be seen in their own right. In the late 1980s the Association produced a series of three books and exhibitions called "Assignments" and when we became active again at the beginning of 2003 one of our priorities was to revive that tradition.

Unseen

In May 2003 we were handed a chance to hold an exhibition in a central London Gallery at very short notice. In a little under three weeks we had formed an exhibitions sub-committee, called for and received a large number of submissions and put the exhibition together. UNSEEN featured 90 photographs that had never been seen before. Many of them had been overlooked by picture editors, some were shot as part of private projects and others had been too late for deadlines. All of the images were top class and the exhibition opened on time with not one but two private views and an impressive catalogue. Versions and edits of the show have since been seen at Focus on Imaging (2004), on The SS Robin in London's Docklands, at the offices of PR company BORKOWSKI and at the Xandra Rhodes Gallery of The Kent Institute of Art & Design.

Five Thousand Days

Shortly after UNSEEN closed at Inside Space we put out a call to members saying that "UNSEEN was just a warm up" asking them to dig back through their archives to the time when the last of the three Assignments books was published. That date coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall and we were working on a major retrospective covering just over fourteen years. Members submitted over 3,500 pictures which were edited, re-edited and pared down to just a few hundred. Five Thousand Days was born. Under the guidance of the Books and Exhibitions sub-committee the project became one of the most impressive and best selling photographic books of the past few years and an outstanding exhibition in The Lyttleton Foyer of the Royal National Theatre - running from the 11th of October 2004 until the 4th of December. The show was specifically designed for the space but in January 2004 it succesfully transferred to Bradford's Museum of Industry for a one month stay.

New Years Day

Five Thousand Days was an epic project which, by it's very nature, we cannot hope to repeat for a few years and so the BPPA is commited to producing further projects on a wide range of topics and exploiting every medium. The first collaborative project to follow Five Thousand Days is New Years Day. Members were invited to submit up to five pictures taken in the first twenty four hours of 2005 to form a timeline web gallery - a kind of snapshot of who was where doing what as the new year began. The photographs form a fascinating document with images ranging from the tragedy of the immediate aftermath of the Asian Tsunami to the spectacle of fireworks over the BA London Eye and the mundanity of family life in the UK.

The Election 2005

The general election of May 2005 was one of the most stage managed, spin driven and least visually interesting elections in modern times. Press photographers faced a month of ten minute photocalls and long frustrating waits whilst trying to find interesting and journalistically significant images. The British Press Photographers' Association decided to put this web gallery together to show the world that good pictures were taken.

A 40 image edit of the project called "Never Mind The Ballots" is showing on board the SS Robin in Docklands during October 2005.

The July Project

This web gallery is a small edit of the hundreds of images submitted by members of The British Press Photographers' Association from the month of July. Some are fun, many others are distressing and the rest reflect the mood of the time. Published six months after the events that it features, this gallery is dedicated to the professionalism of the photographers and to the memory of those whose lives were lost or tragically altered by those events.

Portraits Project

When this project was conceived we spent a long time debating the question "exactly what is a portrait?" In the end we decided to leave it up to the members submitting their work to come up with their own definitions. Over 950 photographs were eventually submitted and this web gallery is the result of a very difficult edit.

Portraiture forms a large part of the work that newspaper and magazine photographers do and the creativity and inventiveness shown in this web gallery is a testament to the approach that BPPA members take to their work.

Celebrities, politicians, sportsmen and women, people "enjoying" their fifteen minutes of fame or infamy as well those who will probably never know that their image has been seen by an audience in another part of the world are all included in this BPPA project.

What's Next?

We have a number of project ideas "bubbling under" and we intend to mix up the formats and subject matters of the projects that we undertake. It won't be long before we announce something new.