Victoria Smith
CV
About Photography
Darkroom ObjectsTo Hold a Photograph
Dust from the Darkroom
Gifts from the Darkroom
The Fall of the Family Album Photography in the Fire Service
Collaboration
Coastal Visions
Social Structures
The Big Picture Show
Photograms and spiral bound artist book
Manchester Metropolitan University
This work addresses the growing familiarity of objects when encountering a space over time. As a process-led practice, the darkroom becomes a site of reliance for the images and objects to exist. The photograms depend on the materials depicted, such as chemicals, trays, tools etc. The spiral bound book contains singular images, and operates as a site of process and an illustrative document of knowledge.
Fixer and light sensitive paper
Manchester Metropolitan University
The visibility of touch is usually erased or avoided in darkroom practice, with procedures of wearing gloves encouraged. To Hold a Photograph responds to the latent traces of photographs through physically engaging with them. Each piece of paper is touched directly with fixer before exposing and developing, to be circulated and held over again.
10x8 photograms
Manchester Metropolitan University
Dust from the Darkroom is a documentation of a decades worth of dust collected from the Manchester Metropolitan University darkroom. A portrait of the darkroom emerges by fixing and reducing the transience of the redundant, and mundane traces left by the inhabitants of the space, to a more cherished photographic-object.
Photogram Objects and Video Installation
Humber Street Gallery, Hull, 2025
Photography: Jules Lister
As an exploration into the currency of friendship, Victoria selected gifts from friends and family as source material. The gifts are reconstructed using photogram prints of themselves. Through time spent in the darkroom, the space itself offered gifts; peace, solitude, meditation, and photographs found in the darkroom bin that were reminiscent of waking up from somebody else’s dream. A short video merges text, orphaned images, and Victoria’s own practice.
Press / Video
Installation
Crusader Mill, Saturation Exhibition, Manchester, UK
Red Light: The Story of Photography in the Fire Service
Victoria spent 10 weeks exploring Fireground’s archives and interviewing former firefighters to discover the roles of photography and illustration in the fire service.
From training resources and product advertising, to forensic and investigation work and the recording of personnel or equipment, there has long been a need to photograph events as they happen.
Victoria built a darkroom in the museum which was a starting point of making work, inspired by the the darkrooms in fire stations, and spent some time creating abstract photograms of Fireground’s collections, a selection of which can be seen at the exhibition.
A wealth of original material at Fireground was engaged with, from glass slides, film negatives, photographic prints and moving images covering more than 100 years. Victoria’s project is entitled “Red Light : A Story of Photography in the Fire Service” and explores the links between photography and firefighting over several decades, as well as depicting some of the more unusual objects in new and exciting ways.
To accompany the exhibition which includes a documentary style film, Victoria invited visitors to an artist talk during the 90th Anniversary open day at Fireground on Saturday 29th April 2023. The talk demonstrated how photography was used by fire brigades over time, for training, recording and forensic purposes.
Selected Pages
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Northend, Sheffield.
Comissioned by British Haiku Society
Coastal Visions is a collaboration between Ian Storr, Professor Ric
Van Noort, Kirsteen Aubrey and Victoria Smith that explores the UK
Coastline through science, language and art.
Supported by the British Council, Victoria was one of 8 Europeans students selected by project mentors Manit Sriwanichpoom and Gabriel Camelin to participate in a 15 day residency and exchange with Silpakorn University International College. Briefed to produce a photographic series responding to the theme Walls & Beyond students collaborated for two weeks to present works at: Galerie Oasis, Goethe Institute and Alliance française (for the 30th Anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall) throughout November 2019.
Social Structures (2019)
Installation, Cinema Oasis Bangkok, TH
Focusing on the wall as a divide of social classes, In and Victoria photographed the markets and slums of Bangkok focusing on Khlong Toei and Talad Noi. Their presentation replicates the materiality of these places whilst experimenting with cyanotypes - a low cost print technique produced by the Bangkok sun.
Through observing their chosen locations, In and Victoria recognised that the wall is often utilised as a function of communication. A repetition of metal structures are present, with photographs and posters pasted upon them. Using sheets of metal sourced from Talad Noi, they construct a piece influenced by their surroundings and place it within the gallery context.
Their second piece takes inspiration from another common market structure; the clothes rail. By replacing the garments with their prints, In and Victoria create an interactive artwork that illustrates the objects, people and social structures of Khlong Toei and Talad Noi.
SODA MA students across Animation, Film, Games Art, Photography and Sound Design came together to create powerful immersive films responding to poems by Young Identity.
Drawing on the legacy of the 5th Pan African Congress, held in Manchester 80 years ago, the work reflects on its history, impact and continued relevance today.
Hosted by Imperial War Museum North, the event took over the Big Picture Show for one evening, filling the space with moving image and sound across 20 screens and 40 channels of audio.