Free Range 2025 [Top 10]

Each year, Open Doors Gallery selects its Top 10 emerging photographic artists from the presentations at Free Range.

Now in its 25th year, Free Range has become a key destination for discovering new creative talent, bringing together standout graduate work from across the UK under one roof at London’s iconic Truman Brewery.

We’re excited to share our 2025 selections. The OD Top Ten will be listed below on Friday 11th July as well as having their work shared to our Discovery account, @odtakeovers.

The OD Photo Prize is our annual open call dedicated to discovering and supporting the next generation of photographic artists. Each artist highlighted below will receive discounted entry to this year’s Prize, with our Free Range Top Talent awarded free submission. Their work will then be considered for a range of awards and opportunities, as selected by our esteemed jury of industry professionals.

Submission deadline | 11 August 2025

Sally Smoker
Nine Lives

Nine Lives  explores loss, memory and absence through my experience of witnessing my Grandma’s decline in health and subsequent death. The project weaves together contemporary photographs taken in the aftermath of her passing with archival images taken from family albums. Through mixed media techniques and film photography, I document not only the physical deterioration of illness but also the process of solidifying memories of those we lose. This work stands as both a personal reflection and a wider meditation on how we remember, grieve and find ways to carry forward the memory of those who have shaped us.

@sallysmokerphotography
This Year’s Free Range Top Talent

Zoë Montgomery
Hide The Matches

“Hide The Matches” is a photographic project that explores the disconnection between clinical language and lived experience, specifically through the lens of ADHD. Catalyzed by personal reflections in psychotherapy, the work interrogates the language of the DSM5, challenging how medical definitions—such as “prone to careless mistakes” or “talks excessively”—can impose reductive labels that obscure the complexity of identity. Revisiting his childhood diagnosis, the artist re-performs moments from the past, including meditative returns to a tree once climbed in impulsive defiance, now approached with creative intention. Through a series of sub-projects, the work critiques diagnostic frameworks while weaving together autobiography, art, and psychological theory to reclaim agency over a lifelong label.

Artwork [Left] Silver gelatine 5x7in darkroom print
Suspended by a nail and obscured with red, frosted plexiglass

@zlmnt

Tom Lockwood
Psalm 119:18

Tom Lockwood, a photographer, graphic designer, and artist based in Bath, UK. He is drawn to capturing people and their stories through a lens of honesty, tenderness, and faith. Rooted in a Christian perspective, his work aims to reflect everyday connections. “My work is about capturing seen and unseen faith and testimony… This project is all about showing how loving and honouring my faith is, with each piece being an intentional and deliberate act of praise.”

@tom_lockwood

Abi MacFarlane
‘A Little Too Much’

This body of work is a deeply personal exploration of my identity, emotions, and past traumatic experiences through the lens of my camera. I use my camera not only to take photographs but as a way to make sense of the emotions that often feel overwhelming and hard to explain. Past events that still haunt me have made it difficult to manage everyday life. And photography has become a form of escapism, a way to feel safe, to process and to communicate what I can’t always say out loud. I’ve learned that I can speak through my images, whether through literal representations in my digital photography or through the raw imperfections of film. Some days it’s just “a little too much “.

@abi.macfarlane
@bathspaphoto

Eleanor Wright
The garden’s not the same

This project explores themes of absence, emotional change, and personal healing within a familiar domestic setting, which in this instance is the garden.  Once a place of play and togetherness now takes on a different feel since my dad leaving.  The garden becomes a space through which I navigate my feelings of loss and confusion. Using this garden photographically has served as a form of therapy, allowing me to process and understand my experience. Whilst this work is deeply personal, it also speaks to a shared reality. Through this project, I hope to connect with others who may feel the same, offering reassurance that they are not alone and that it is possible to find clarity. 

@eleanor.wright.photography

Ame Rowley-Evans
Every Day is Like Sunday

Everyday is like Sunday, explores the complex and turbulent relationship I have with my hometown in the north of England. In the body of work, I investigate my internalised classism and my upbringing by recalling memories of my teenage years, some of the most tumultuous and unsettled times in my life. At its core, my project explores the feeling of displacement. Always moving but never arriving.

@amerowleyevans
@route_collective

Anna Jago Warin
The Profit of Pain

‘The Profit of Pain’ is a photographic project discussing UK healthcare systems in their behaviour towards the trans community. Utilising Anna’s own experience as a trans-masculine individual, they track a personal journey through both private sector and NHS funded spheres, utilising self-portraiture and medical documents to tell their story. In a contemporary society where trans people sit in at the heart of a moral panic, this body of work is becoming increasingly necessary, rightfully advocating for young trans voices to enter the public debate over their rights. 

@jagoimaging

Isaac McCann
Crucifixes

Crucifixes is my reaction to the hand-drawn crosses I kept seeing on doorways around Edinburgh. I didn’t know who put them there or why, but they stayed with me – so I gave them my own meaning. Over the past year, I’ve experienced the end of a relationship, the loss of my brother to suicide, and a constant feeling of loneliness and confusion. For me, the crosses became symbols of forgiveness, hope, isolation, and change. This project follows those emotions through quiet moments and overlooked places – sometimes the cross is visible, sometimes only suggested in a shape or shadow. Sometimes it felt like I was the only one who had seen them, almost as though they were speaking to me. Even though the project is called Crucifixes, the crosses were never really the main focus – they were just a way to describe all the moments of my life over the last year. Mainly the moments where I was lost, looking for forgiveness, and then the moment at the end of the year that tore me apart.

Edinburgh Napier 

Jessica Sansom

Jessica Sansom is a photographer with a background in television, film, music, and events, specializing in unit stills photography that captures the emotional essence of storytelling. With a strong understanding of production dynamics and a seamless ability to integrate into creative teams, her work enhances narrative depth while preserving key moments on set across a range of genres.

@jessicasansom_stills

Danesha Atkins
This Is My London

Danesha Atkins is a London-based documentary photographer whose work explores themes of identity, culture, and representation through intimate portraiture and contextual imagery. Working across digital and analogue formats, she focuses on highlighting underrepresented voices and lived experiences. Her ongoing projects include This Is My London, which reflects on inner-city life and the layered meanings of home, and Don’t Touch My Hair, a powerful visual exploration of Black heritage, history, and self-expression through hairstyling, personal narratives, and metaphorical imagery.

@bydee.jpg