Panel talk: Reimagining Landscape Photography

Photographers Alys Tomlinson and Fergus Heron approach landscape and the environment in distinct ways, exploring how photography can evoke feeling, memory and a sense of place. Their work moves beyond traditional ideas of landscape documentation, asking what it means to photograph place today.

Join us for a panel discussion chaired by Dr Hope Wolf, coinciding with the beginnings of a new commission that Alys has begun producing for Towner. She will be documenting Black Robin Farm ahead of the creation of Towner Seven Sisters, exploring this historic South Downs site before its transformation into a major new cultural destination for art, heritage and nature.

There will be 15 minutes at the end for audience questions.

This event is part of Digging Horizons, a series of autumn talks, walks and events exploring new approaches to landscape, ecology and archaeology. Together, these events will test and shape future activities for Towner Seven Sisters, Towner's forthcoming site at Black Robin Farm. Meet, experiment and engage with the cultivation of a cultural site stitched into the landscape. Digging Horizons is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund.

The Black Robin Farm photography project has also been supported by the University of Sussex through the Arts and Humanities Research Council Impact Acceleration Award (IAA) and is associated with the Sussex Retold project.

Alys Tomlinson is a photographic artist, born in Brighton, UK and now based in London. She works primarily in black and white analogue on a large format camera. Her work explores themes of faith, identity, ritual, and place. She is the author of the projects and books Ex-Voto, Lost Summer, and Gli Isolani (The Islanders). In 2024, she released Mother Vera her first documentary feature film, co-directed with Cécile Embleton. The film won the Grierson Award for Best Documentary at the London Film Festival and other awards include the Sony World Photographer of the Year and the NPG Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize. Her work is held in a number of museum, gallery and private collections.

Fergus Heron is an artist and photographer making pictures with ecological formations and urban environments. He lives and works in Brighton, England and Nairn, Scotland. Heron studied at the Royal College of Art and the University for the Creative Arts at Farnham. Exhibitions featuring his work have taken place at Tate Britain, Centre for Contemporary Art and the Natural World and Royal West of England Academy. Publications include contributions to A Companion to Photography (Oxford: Blackwell, 2020), Emerging Landscapes (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014) and Visible Economies (Brighton: Photoworks, 2012). He is a Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for MA Photography at the University of Brighton.

£7 Standard

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