Get ready for the fifth edition of ! From 25th October to 16th November 2025 there鈥檒l be many opportunities to take part, with exciting new exhibitions, talks, tours and opportunities for portfolio reviews. We鈥檙e honoured to be part of it all sharing our second online exhibition as part of the biennial festival.
The theme for this year is 鈥楾ruth鈥 鈥 a much debated theme in the world of photography due to its ability to document reality, and its use as a creative tool. Where does reality and creativity meet (or end) when a photograph is taken? And how does that align with the meaning of truth and when does it matter? More importantly, perhaps it鈥檚 time to recognise an overarching truth that鈥檚 universal to us all 鈥 the positive truth that creativity is what makes us human.
Through the photography of 17吃瓜在线鈥檚 most creative contributors we examine how the gift of creativity and true creatives speak to us, wherever, whenever and however we encounter it.
The truth that endures
Some truths are hard to take. What do we do when there are things happening in the world that we find hurtful, upsetting or just plain wrong (but true)? Perhaps we reassure ourselves in finding the truths that are good, or at least, the ones we agree with, to counter the truths that make us uncomfortable.
Truths are like the flotsam and jetsam on an open sea, where some might stay underwater, never coming to the surface for others to know, while some might be known for a while, but soon get forgotten and sink to the depths for eternity.
A Universal Truth: All of us can identify with the depiction of this person who, in a quiet moment, pauses to look up at the emerging cherry blossom. The artist has reminded us of the experience of the joy and hope of spring, perhaps after a barren winter 鈥 nearly 200 years after it was created. Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) Evening Cherry Blossoms at Gotenyama, 1831.
Nearly every truth gets old. But there are some layers of truth that will always be with us. Most of these ones stay afloat through the passage of time, across generations, and even come to the fore and reveal themselves in times of those 鈥榬eal鈥 distressing truths.
They are the ones which showed themselves in the in London to raise morale throughout The Second World War and during the blitz. The ones where an artist鈥檚 creative endeavour, through their work in poetry, writing, painting or photography, still resonates with us today.
This is the layer of truth that sits above the day-to-day, the layer that gives us glimmers of hope and dreams to another world, to escape the daily truths. This is creative truth.
The value of creativity
We lean into both creative endeavour and creative experience often, and it comes with an important value that鈥檚 not just light-hearted. C.S. Lewis who, on speaking to his first year students worried at the outbreak of war in 1939 and, because of that, the futility of learning, told them: 鈥淚f men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun.鈥
It is not only that in our search for beauty, artistic works are created or re-performed in both easy and difficult times. It鈥檚 also that they still have resonance with us today 鈥 and for that we should be grateful.
A young Sioux Veteran recovering in hospital, West Baden, Ind., painting with his left hand a portrait of a famous native American chief. His right hand was torn with a shell in the First World War, 1919.
This echoes John F. Kennedy鈥檚 (at a fundraising dinner for what would become The Kennedy Centre), where he acknowledged the unifying quality of creative works across nations, and that: 鈥淭o the extent that artists struggle to express beauty in form and colour and sound, to the extent that they write about man鈥檚 struggle with nature or society, or himself, to that extent, they strike a responsive chord in all humanity…Behind the storm of daily conflict and crisis, the dramatic confrontations, the tumult of political struggle, the poet, the artist, the musician, continues the quiet work of centuries.鈥
Robots don鈥檛 cry
Common to us all is feeling which is best expressed creatively when we can鈥檛 share it with others individually. I don鈥檛 know how a song written and performed years before I was born can make me cry, but it can. I have cried at a poem, book, song, photo, film, and painting before. Have you? I doubt an AI-generated work trying to convey a feeling will ever make me cry. After all, robots don鈥檛 cry. But true creatives (humans) do.
True creatives cry when hurt, jump for joy when hearing happy news and feel everything in between. True creatives bring to life the things we don鈥檛 always see. True creatives have a sense of common feeling mixed with unique real world experiences. True creatives work hard to hone their craft. True creatives seek influence from other true creatives. True creatives make things with feeling and gift it to others. True creatives stir our souls. Now that is long forgotten, true creatives still speak to us, quietly, from the grave.
Continuing humanity鈥檚 creative endeavour, in their own small way, here are photographs taken in the real world, gifted from true creatives. Pass it on.
All of the photographs in this online exhibition have been chosen to evoke a sense of feeling in the viewer. When photographers use ‘real world first perspectives’ combined with thoughtful compositions and juuxtapositions of light to capture their surroundings, they are pulling on our memories of experience in what it feels like to live, breathe and be in this world. To express ‘what it’s really like to be there’, not necessarily in a literal idea of physical place, but in a sense of shared mood, spirit and emotion is one of the greatest gifts of a true creative.