The profession of Marilyn Stafford (1923-2025) started in an uncommon manner. In 1948, associates making a movie concerning the well-known scientist Albert Einstein wanted somebody to {photograph} him, and Stafford, regardless of having no skilled background, was the one who picked up the digital camera.
What adopted was three many years documenting refugees, slum communities, style homes and heads of state, guided early on by Robert Capa and Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris. She grew to become certainly one of solely a handful of girls working in London’s Fleet Street newspaper district, at a time when that wasn’t a small factor to be.
This September, that legacy will get a correct weekend. POST, Brighton and Hove’s new images centre, is internet hosting three days marking the tenth anniversary of the Marilyn Stafford FotoReportage Award, the prize arrange in her title to assist ladies telling documentary tales by images.
Organized by FotoDocument and backed by Nikon, the occasion runs from September 18-20 and brings collectively previous winners, jury members and among the most revered names within the discipline.
For anybody taking pictures documentary work, or just attempting to construct a profession in an business that also skews closely male, that is price a go to.
It’s much less a single exhibition, extra a working weekend: retrospectives to check, panels to peruse, and a portfolio day with precise suggestions connected.
Friday evening opens with the launch of When the Earth Gives Birth, the new body of work from Johanna Alarcón, this year’s award winner.
It sits alongside a retrospective pulling highlights from a full decade of winning projects, giving visitors a rare chance to trace how the award’s documentary style has shifted since it launched.
A parallel display of Stafford’s own photographs and books runs throughout, including work from her time covering Algerian refugees in Tunisia and her portraits of Indira Gandhi during the Bangladesh Liberation War.
There’s also a first look at a forthcoming documentary about Stafford’s life, with a trailer screening and a Q&A with director Ellie Emptage of Tara Films.
It’s a rare bit of moving-image context for a photographer whose stills have mostly had to speak for themselves.
Veterans and industry access
The panels are where this weekend earns its keep for anyone in the trade.
Natalya Saprunova, the 2022 award winner, joins jury members and veteran documentary photographers Andrea Bruce and Donna DeCesare for a broader discussion on where women stand in contemporary documentary photography today, alongside Laura El-Tantawy and Neo Ntsoma. Carol Allen-Storey adds a book talk and signing with GOST Books, useful for anyone weighing up self-publishing versus a small press.
Sunday closes the weekend with something very practical: Nikon-run workshops and one-to-one portfolio reviews for students and recent graduates, hosted by Nikon ambassador Carolyn Mendelsohn. It’s the kind of access that’s hard to come by outside a festival setting, and worth booking early given the format.
Nina Emett, director of FotoDocument and co-director of POST, says the weekend is as much a tribute to Stafford’s adopted hometown as to her career.
Given how much of that career was spent working around (and often against) the industry’s usual gatekeeping, a weekend built on access rather than spectacle feels like the right way to mark it.
The Marilyn Stafford FotoReportage Award tenth anniversary weekend runs at POST, Brighton and Hove, from September 18-20. Tickets can be found now.