WHERE WE MOVE TOGETHER

Open Eye Gallery, Liverpool | 12th–26th July 2026

Manchester Gardens was a collaboration between Manchester Photographers Collective and Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool. Presented in the gallery’s Digital Window Gallery, it brought together photographs by 24 members of the collective, including my own work, to explore what gardens and green spaces mean to the people who use them.

We invited photographers to interpret the theme in their own way. The resulting photo-stories moved between parks, plants, wildlife and the people who care for green spaces. Together, they showed how much can be found in places we often think we know: somewhere to meet, to work, to pause, or simply to spend a little time outside.

As the founder of MPC, I was especially proud to see members’ work presented at Open Eye Gallery. I started the collective because I wanted photographers at different stages of their practice to have a place to meet, encourage one another and find opportunities to show their work. Manchester Gardens was one of those opportunities made real through the work of the photographers, the MPC team and our collaboration with the gallery.

Seeing my photographs alongside those of other members made this exhibition particularly meaningful to me. Each person had followed the same open brief and arrived somewhere different. That range of ideas and ways of seeing is what makes a collective exhibition so interesting, and what I hope people took away from Manchester Gardens.