The 2017 edition of Format, the UK’s largest photography festival will explore the theme of Habitat. The biennial festival, now in its 8th edition, is a showcase for emerging talent alongside established artists. Format17 will display work by over 200 international artists and photographers across 30 exhibitions, alongside a photobook market, portfolio reviews and a series of innovative events and performances.

The wide range of projects on display at Format17 are connected by the theme Habitat - exploring landscape, environment, mobility, migration, digital worlds, ideas of home and displacement, conflict and regeneration through the work of international photographers and artists. Rapid changes in the environment caused by industry, technology, conflict, migration and climate are accelerating at such unprecedented rates that the human impact on the Earth has pushed us into a new cultural geographical epoch or era known as the ‘Anthropocene’. With tangible impacts of these changes being recorded, Format17 explores the effect, solutions and conditions of this state that we are in, on micro and macro levels worldwide.

I felt the idea of the Anthropocene would be timely. It’s a concept that’s important not just in art or photography, but more generally in terms of how we start to understand and come to terms with what is important in the world around us and our relation to it

(Louise Clements, Artistic Director Quad & Format International Photography Festival)