With a focus on young and emerging photographers, the project features six artists living in the UK whose work explores this year’s theme of “Borders/Lines of the City – imaginary or real”.
This exciting selection includes a wide range of projects incorporating city life and borders either geographical, symbolic or intangible:
Serena Brown looks at the co-option of working-class fashion by luxury brands; Lewis Khan’s portrays South London school graduates on the border between adolescence and adulthood; through collaborative portraits, Nina Manandhar photographs residents in a London housing estate; Alice Poyzer’s surreal images traverse the line between social norms and neurodivergent realities; Cian Oba-Smith challenges stereotypical representations of urban culture and knife crime; and Zula Rabikowska documents gender identity and womanhood along the former border of the Iron Curtain in Central and Eastern Europe.
What to expect
The Night of Photography is an open-air event organised by the Museum of Warsaw since 2023. Large-scale outdoor projections across Warsaw’s Old Town and New Town will showcase a selection of works by photographers from Poland and abroad.
Get to know the artists
Serena Brown
Serena Brown (b. 1997, UK)
Back a Yard, 2019 - ongoing
This series of portraits centres around the perception of fashion and class associated with the tracksuit, challenging its negative cultural stereotypes. Brown collaborated with fashion designer Georgia Borenius to create three luxury tracksuits the sitter could choose from to express their individuality, heritage and culture. Resourced for £20 at local textile markets in Shepherds Bush, West London, Brown emphasises the affordability of dynamic working-class fashion while disapproving of the high-end trend of looking ‘poor’ to appear cool. The project is inspired by the Harlem-born tailor, Dapper Dan screen-printing high fashion monograms on garments to cheaply sell them to gangsters, rappers and locals into the 1990s. His shop eventually reopened with the support of a Gucci collaboration in 2018: acknowledging his fashion significance and origins, as well as diversifying the fashion world.
Shot locally in West London with friends from her childhood, Brown reclaims the working-class influence on trends and expresses the joy of everyday fashion. She critically engages with the hierarchies and bias in contemporary luxury brands, and the monetising of a fake urban working-class aesthetic, which makes it inaccessible for those from whom it takes inspiration.
Lewis Khan
Lewis Khan (b. 1990, UK)
Leavers, 2018 - ongoing
For this project, Khan returns each year to document the prom of the local secondary school in his neighbourhood, taking portraits of the graduate students. Jubilant yet complex, this project is built on long-term engagement and provides a glimpse into those precious last moments of adolescence before embarking into the unknown.
For many pivotal life events, the photograph often functions as a public trophy, symbolising success and pride, a document and proof of accomplishment. Instead, Khan immerses himself in the community, taking behind-the-scenes shots of the celebrations, candid moments of young people celebrating in sparkling dresses and evening suits. The artist documents a moment of self-expression outside of the school structure and rigid rules. The images instantly turn into nostalgia the following day when the discharged students are being start their new life.
Employing still and moving images, Khan also includes a soundtrack by Lara George and poetry by Caleb Femi.
Nina Manandhar
Nina Manandhar (b. 1981, UK)
Thamesmead, 2016-2018
This complex, socially engaged work portrays the community and cultures living in Thamesmead, a district of the capital and one of the city’s largest postwar social housing schemes, dating from the 1960s. Manandhar creates her images collaboratively with local residents, working with natural light and colour to construct a portrait of the people and area which challenges both the utopian visions of the past and the negative stereotypes of the present. Constructing a photo studio against the backdrop of Brutalist tower blocks and concrete walkways, she involves all generations, identities and cultures to investigate the politics of representation often speaking to people at length about their experiences, histories and hopes. In addition to her portraits, she often integrates archival materials, in this case drawing upon historical photographs from The Peabody Trust Archive, which present a futuristic vision of the area at odds with the reality that unfolded since, and the complexities faced by communities caught between the challenges of the past and hopes for the future.
Cian Oba-Smith
Cian Oba-Smith (b. 1992, UK)
Among Flowers, Tears and Rain, 2019 – ongoing
Focusing on the victims of knife crime and their family members, Oba-Smith takes a sensitive, focused approach to this issue beyond the newspaper headlines. His portraits and photographs of memorials, alongside interviews of those affected, give important insight into the ongoing trauma of survivors and the relatives who have lost a loved one. Drawing from the artist’s own experience growing up in North London, Oba-Smith challenges the frequent misrepresentation in media coverage and stigmatisation of black communities. By including the community’s voices the series shines awareness on aspects feeding into these crimes such as the closure of youth clubs, gang rivalry, and uncontrolled access to knives. Focusing on collaborations with residents and associated charities, Oba-Smith successfully shifts the perspective from statistics and numbers to shaping people’s understanding, critical for social and political change.
Alice Poyzer
Alice Poyzer (b. 1999, UK)
Other Joys, 2023 – ongoing
In her ongoing series, Poyzer mixes self-portraits and constructed images to create a seemingly surreal and fantastical world. This autobiographical work explores the special interests, passions and obsessions often found in people with autism. With a longtime fascination for animal shows and pet clubs, the artist poses with taxidermy animals, taking on multiple personalities through her photographs. As the title suggests, the act of documenting these obsessions becomes a source of joy in itself, allowing the artist to find freedom from the pressure of ‘fitting in’ through the creative process. A celebration of self-acceptance for Poyzer, the work mirrors the artist’s own journey from masking her autism to eventually celebrating her own reality.
Zula Rabikowska
Zula Rabikowska (b. 1990, Poland)
Nothing but a Curtain, 2021 – ongoing
Rabikowska travelled 4500 miles along the borders of the former Iron Curtain documenting the contemporary post-Soviet gender identities. Living in the UK, the Polish artist noticed the stereotypical representations of Eastern Europe and enduring traces of the former world order: the collective identity over individualism, a dominating patriarchy, and sexist stereotypes. While visiting 20 cities in 10 countries, the artist focused on a new generation of female, non-binary, genderfluid and transgender individuals. Like the artist, the 104 participants were mainly born after the Wall came down in 1989. Rabikowska uses an old Soviet analogue camera Kiev 80, notorious for issues with focal sharpness and light leakage. Colour fading and stains are frequently visible in her images, symbolising a rupture of old structures or the drawing back of the curtain into new realities and alternative spaces.
Part of the UK/Poland Cultural Season 2025, in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute, London and the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Poland.
