In a broad group of researchers, with widely different approaches to unconnected subjects, and also with widely different ends in view, the uses of photography will likely be various. The aim of this show is not by any means to try to squeeze this multiplicity into any theoretical straitjacket. On the contrary, by holding the different ways of working up to each other, we hope to throw some light on the rich diversity within the photographic ecosystem, even within the tightish confines of a single group of colleagues in one university.

Our colleagues expect their pictures to inform, to excite, to reveal, to describe, to provoke, to underline… Photography in the research context is a chameleon. It takes on the colours of the research in which it is active. Examination cliché asks candidates to compare and contrast. That’s what you can do in this wide-ranging exhibition that asks what exactly is the role photography plays here, or here, or here – and finds answers sometimes not at all obvious.