About
Embrace your heritage,
Embrace your myths and traditions,
Myths, folklore and knowledge,
passed on from generation to generation
and transmitted to generations to come,
to be shared through photography,
...and photography practice to be explored
through personal stories and feelings.
What's your story? Who are you?
Mission
The Chester Photo Festival aims to develop a platform of references, resources and guidance for everyone at all levels, a platform where people embracing the photo-entanglement concept are happy to work with photography as a creative practice to create better relations between people.
As guidance for working with photo-entanglement as a creative practice, the Chester Photo Festival offers a variety of activities and references, courses, workshops, an art residency, a conference, a prize and, finally, the annual Chester Photo Festival.
Driven by years of experience, this structure of activities can be a suggestion for a year of basic creative art practice work. This way someone would be experimenting and finding relevant references then, in addition, would participate in an art residency, then at a conference, eventually receiving an award and finally, they would celebrate at a festival, the Chester Photo Festival.
vision
We wish to expand Dr Alexandru Modoi's work and expertise into a festival (the Chester Photo Festival) where people from all over the world and at all levels work with photography as a creative practice to share their stories, folklore and myths.
Following the methods and the working models from 'Re-Imagining Romanian Culture from Afar through Still Life Photographic Images of Wolf Myths' people would potentially gain the confidence to have their voices heard through their own culture, their own myths and their own photography interests.
Director and Arts Organiser of the Chester Photo Festival is Dr Alexandru Modoi, from September 2023 - present
'Passing down knowledge, traditions and heritage from generations to future generations is essential.'
Bio
In August 2023, Dr Modoi was awarded a PhD in Photography Creative Practice from UCLan, School of Arts and Media, for 'Re-Imagining Romanian Culture from Afar through Still Life Photographic Images of Wolf Myths' (2019-2023, thesis available at https://clok.uclan.ac.uk/48186).
His expertise has been refined through many years of creative practice and research during field trips, photo interviews, focus groups and public exhibitions. In 2015, he received a Master of Art in Photography with Distinction from the MMU, School of Art and Media. In 2014, he graduated with 1st Class the BA(Hons) Photography from Kingston University London, School of Fine Art. He holds additional awards and certificates from studying, exhibiting and publishing and from working on various projects and commissions in London, Manchester, Liverpool and internationally in France, Croatia, Japan and Romania.
Meet the Trustees
Professor Erik knudsen
Erik is a filmmaker and Emeritus Professor at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) in the UK, where he was formerly the Faculty Director of Research for the Faculty of Culture and Creative Industries. As a multiple prize winning filmmaker, his films include Goodwin Island (99 minutes, fiction, 2024), True Calling (88 minutes, fiction, 2021), Cleft Lip (84 minutes, fiction, 2018), The Raven On The Jetty (88 minutes, fiction, 2015). He runs his own film production company, One Day Films Ltd.
dr ANA-CRISTINA IRIAN
Cristina holds a PhD in visual arts from UNARTE. She is a visual arts researcher, curator, and research-based artist working with photo archives, with a background in sociology (from Trento & Regensburg) and visual anthropology (from Bucharest & Perugia).
Her artistic practice, guided by the motto ‘No one left behind’, emphasises memory objects and integrates photographic material into contemporary artworks (Omnia.photo). She has participated in over 40 exhibitions, including those in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Poland, Portugal, România, Hungary, and the United Kingdom, and she is a member of Futures, the European Photography Platform.
She is the author of Photographic Collections and Archives Today in the Digital World and The Production of Space and the Social Life of Artworks in the Streets (Tritonic Publishing House).
dr IAN CLEGG
Project and Photographic Director. Lecturer at Higher Education Institutions in the U.K. and abroad. Researcher and collaborator in making new and unique art.
In 2022, Ian completed his PhD in Photography creative practices at UCLan, specialising in managing photographic projects from samples to final images. Because of his research with real-world case studies, he created procedures and methods which enable SMEs and artisan companies to work effectively with photography—enabling them to grow their businesses with the support of compelling images that work across many digital platforms.
open call for trustees
Submissions are open.
Please send your expression of intent to a.modoi@chesterphotofestival.com by 28 February 2025.
Your expertise must be based on photography, creative practice, and art cultures, in line with Chester Photo Festival’s Mission and Vision.
Chester photo festival is for everyone at all levels
It was founded in September 2023 and is available to the public from 1st of May 2024.
In May 2025, our first edition of the annual Chester Photo Festival is expected to take place to celebrate one year of work.