4.15 PM – 5.15 PM
University of Brighton, 58–67 Grand Parade, BN2 0JY
Featuring some of the artists included in the publication, this talk explores the themes of the 2026 Photoworks Annual. Cosmophotographies applies Yuk Hui’s concept of cosmotechnics to photography, asking what ideology is embedded in the camera and its images, and whether the disastrous relationship with the world that emerged with European modernity can be envisaged differently.
Diane Smyth was born in 1975 in Northern Ireland. Editor of the Photoworks Annual and British Journal of Photography, she teaches history and theory of photography at London College of Communications, and writes for titles including The Guardian, FOAM and The Art Newspaper, as well as photobooks and catalogues. She has taken part in talks and events at institutions such as Bodleian Libraries, London School of Economics and Whitechapel Gallery, and helped judge the 2026 Kraszna-Krausz Photography Book Awards. She holds an MA in modern literatures in English from Birkbeck College, University of London.
Born in 1990 in Beijing, Feiyi Wen is a London-based visual artist and researcher who holds an MA in photography from Royal College of Art in London and a practice-led PhD in fine art from Slade School of Fine Art. Her practice is rooted in a deep engagement with Eastern ways of seeing and the subtle poetry of the natural world, and draws on Taoist dualism, East Asian landscape traditions and literary sensibilities.
Eugenie Shinkle is a London-based artist and writer whose work explores photography as a durational and embodied encounter. She uses multiple photographic images to build large-scale image fields that reorganise perception across scale, resisting singular viewpoints. Her installations explore processes of accumulation, transformation and instability, treating photography as a spatial and material medium rather than a transparent record. Alongside her artistic practice, she writes extensively on photography, visual culture and photographic objects.
Coşkun Güçlü is an interdisciplinary molecular ecologist who leads the Environment and Conservation Fund Project, ‘Rewilding Hong Kong: Mapping the Hidden Biodiversity and Carbon Services of Forest Soils’, as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Hong Kong. During his PhD at the university, he used archival and statistical approaches to track the recovery of once-destroyed forests, and he has collaborated with Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden to study reforestation through analysing environmental DNA of fungi and bacteria in regenerating soils.
Artist and filmmaker Tsz Wai Pun holds an MFA from the School of Creative Media, Hong Kong, and a BA in arts and sciences from University College London. Her short film, The Years Flow Like Water, was awarded Best Work at the Floating Projects Video Zine D-Normal/V-Essay (Issue 3), and Cavity was shown as part of Film Culture Centre Architekture In Motion film festival in Hong Kong. Her mixedmedia lecture performances were showcased at No Limits (2026), Tai Kwun Contemporary (2024) and Asia Art Archive (2024), including Missing Objects. Pun is a part-time lecturer at Hong Kong Art School.