Newhaven Open: Julia Grzegorzewska

I am a 19-year-old fine art photographer based in Lewes, East Sussex, beginning a BA in Photography at the University of Brighton. My practice explores relationships between people, place and perception, using digital manipulation to transform photographs of familiar environments into unfamiliar images.

Working primarily with photographs of places I know, I invert and manipulate their forms, transforming them into photographic negatives. This process disrupts the familiarity of the original landscape while maintaining a connection to the environment from which the image came. I am interested in how this reversal can encourage us to look again at places we may otherwise take for granted.

My practice develops through an ongoing cycle of observing, photographing, transforming and seeing again. The environments around me inform my images, while the transformed photographs alter my perception of those environments and encourage further observation. Lewes, Newhaven and the landscape connecting them, including the River Ouse and the South Downs, are central to this process.

My engagement with the local arts community has also influenced the development of my practice, introducing me to new approaches to working with place and have become part of the way I photograph and understand my surroundings.

Through photography and digital manipulation, I seek to create moments of recognition and unfamiliarity, inviting viewers to reconsider how they see the environments around them.