OPEN ECO: Rosie Barnes, Lights Left On IV, from the series Lights Left On, 2018
Photography is the ultimate communicator, an endlessly powerful tool with an ease of accessibility, in the making and the viewing, creating a powerful platform to highlight the considerations needed for people to be made aware, to reflect, to understand, to take action. That could be photojournalistic in style or something much more subtle.
As a child it was always impressed upon me that I should never leave a light on in a room that wasn’t occupied, a rule that I have stuck to. More recently I have become drawn to the sight of lights left on within our landscapes. At night and in darkness, they are something of practical use, yet by day, they jar and create a visual disruption. Being lit by the natural light that surrounds them, they become an object, not a tool. And whilst they bestow an unsettling beauty upon these landscapes, the Lights Left On offer up a quiet, yet uneasy comment on our casual wastage of resources.
Rosie is a fine art/documentary photographer, with a particular interest in themes that consider our relationship with the natural world. She has had work exhibited in China at Lishui Photo Festival (A Peculiar Convenience); in Sweden, at Landskrona Photo Festival (Lights Left On); at Brighton Photo Fringe (2022) (To The Dogs) and at the Centre for British Photography (A Peculiar Convenience). She also makes work about neurodiversity, particularly autism, publishing the ground-breaking book Understanding Stanley – Looking through Autism in 2014, which was widely featured in national and international press and in Photomonitor. She’s currently working with the Wellcome Collection on an extension of her project No You’re Not – a Portrait of Autistic Women.
Photo Fringe invited artists to propose a single image to engage audiences and help us imagine a greener, fairer world. Artists were asked to respond to the question “How can photography make a difference to the climate crisis?"
The resulting outdoor exhibition of selected images by nineteen artists can be found on Brighton seafront next to the Upside Down House until 17 November 2024.
See all of the images together here
Created with funding from Arts Council England National Lottery Project Fund and the UK government and Brighton & Hove City Council through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. With print sponsorship from SAS Graphics.
Thanks to our judges Siân Berry, MP and Laura Summerton, Photography Manager, WaterAid.