New Focus: Bradford Young Curators are delighted to announce five new photography commissions for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.

Young people’s collective New Focus, working alongside the team at Impressions Gallery, have selected five photographers who will capture a portrait of contemporary Bradford. The commissions form one part of the gallery’s landmark projects for Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture, and the resulting work will be shown in an exhibition exploring Bradford’s rich multicultural history, opening in September 2025.

Following an open call for proposals, the commissions have been awarded to three Bradford-based photographers, Laura Mate, Nathan McGill and Karol Wyszynski, and two national photographers, Anselm Ebulue and Tori Ferenc. Each photographer has responded to a brief to capture portraits of families, in the broadest sense, throughout the Bradford District. Their resulting photographs will share stories from a broad social spectrum of communities and groups, celebrating both the families we are born to and the families we choose.

Those selected include photographers with lived experience of migration, those whose practice focuses on the rituals and resilience of community life, and artists born and bred in Bradford, with strong personal links to communities in the district. By working with intergenerational and multicultural groups, the photographers will capture universal stories of identity, belonging and home, encouraging an open dialogue on how our past can shape and inspire our future.

The five photographers are working alongside New Focus and Impressions Gallery, collaborating with communities to shoot new photographs throughout spring and summer 2025. The work will be shown at Impressions Gallery from 13 September 2025, alongside community-sourced archive family photographs sharing Bradford’s past through the lens of those who have first-hand experience of its history.

The commissions and exhibition are part of a wider project being led by New Focus: Bradford Young Curators, a group of ten young creatives from Bradford, growing their curatorial skills throughout 2025, under the guidance of Impressions Gallery and a cohort of mentors, including artists, curators and archivists.

An Impressions Gallery project in partnership with Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture.