Dark Peak Photo Festival 2026 explores identity through photography

This year’s festival explores the theme Identity, examining how photography can reflect, shape and question who we are individually and collectively and how identity is influenced by place, culture, history and environment.

At the heart of the festival is the Headline Exhibition at Glossop in The Old Town Hall, a beautifully renovated historic space within the Glossop Market Hall collection of buildings, that has recently reopened as a key cultural venue for the town and wedding venue.

The exhibition brings together leading and emerging photographers responding to the theme with depth, sensitivity and critical insight. The main exhibition is free to attend, with a suggested donation to support further projects including the festival in 2027

The exhibition also includes a presentation of work by Shirley Baker, one of the most important figures in post-war British photography, shown through photographs on loan from her estate. Baker’s street photographs, taken in Manchester and Salford during the 1960s, focus on children and families living through a period of dramatic social change as post-war slum clearances reshaped working-class neighbourhoods.

Her candid, unposed images capture moments of play, friendship and everyday life with warmth, empathy and humour, revealing how identity is shaped through community, place and shared experience. As one of the few women practising street photography in post-war Britain, Baker remains a pioneering figure whose work continues to resonate powerfully today.

Featured exhibitors include Adam Docker, whose work explores identity through portraiture and documentary practice, and Kate Bellis, presenting cyanotype-based work rooted in long-term engagement with rural communities and landscape. Kat Wood who is showing her award winning photographic project looking at the identities of Female Farmers many from the North West.

Alongside the headline exhibition, Dark Peak Photo Festival will showcase work by around 175 additional photographers through its Open Call exhibition, presented across venues throughout Glossop, as well as a number of smaller solo exhibitions. The Open Call has attracted photographers from across the UK and internationally, including participants from Japan, France, Spain and Australia, reflecting the festival’s growing international reach while remaining firmly rooted in its local context.

Together, the exhibitions create a vibrant photographic trail through the town, offering audiences the opportunity to encounter a wide range of voices, perspectives and approaches to the theme of identity.

A programme of talks, workshops and events runs alongside the exhibitions, welcoming people of all ages and levels of experience. Workshops include street Photography, Cyanotype Printing and Smartphone Photography, alongside discussion-based events exploring Ethics in Nature and Travel Photography and a guided Photography Twilight Walk.

Dark Peak Photo Festival is volunteer-led and unfunded, driven by the energy, commitment and shared belief of those involved in the value of photography and culture at a local level. Support from Derbyshire Makes has enabled the delivery of the festival’s workshop programme, making it possible to provide a number of free events as part of the wider programme. This support has helped ensure the festival remains accessible to a broad and diverse audience.

The festival is produced by Dark Peak Photo, a not for profit organisation founded in 2023 to inspire public engagement with contemporary photography, support local photographers, and foster dialogue through visual culture. Events take place across a network of community and cultural spaces throughout Glossop.

With the support of artists, volunteers, local organisations and businesses, Dark Peak Photo Festival continues to grow as a distinctive regional event, bringing ambitious contemporary photography to the edge of the Peak District.

Quotes from participants

Carys Kaiser - Festival Director says: "This year we are showing work not only by some of the most exciting contemporary photographers but also by Shirley Baker is culturally a significant photographer being one of the few female photographers in post war Britain she led the way for the future, pathed the way for female photographers in the following generations.

"The work on show documents Childhood scenes in the 1960's across Manchester and Salford. This is very exciting for Dark Peak Photo as The Work of Shirley Baker is usually only shown in large galleries, The Tate, Sactchi and The Lowry and we are very thankful to Shirley Baker Estate in allowing us this opportunity.'

Adam Docker: "I’m genuinely excited to be part of Dark Peak Photo this year, both as an exhibitor and leading a workshop on Saturday 21st February. It means a lot to contribute not only through exhibiting some of my work, but by sharing the way I see and approach portraiture with others."

Adam's work has been widely recognised, including British Journal of Photography’s Portrait of Britain Winner (2021 and 2025) and Portrait of Humanity Winner (2021 and 2023), LensCulture Finalist 2024 and Independent Photographer Finalist 2023.