Join the winner of the Belfast Photo Festival’s Spotlight Award 2025 as they talk about their photographic career to date, and their winning body of work. Hosted by Jessica Baxter, Assistant Curator at TATE Modern UK. 

Artist Bio:

Eli Durst, born in 1989 in Austin, Texas, studied American literature and history at Wesleyan University before assisting the photographer Joel Meyerowitz and training as a fine-art printer. He earned a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) from Yale School of Art in 2016, where he received the Richard Benson Prize for Excellence in Photography.

His series ‘In Asmara’ won the 2016 Aperture Portfolio Prize, and his monograph ‘The Community’ (2020) received special mention at Rencontres d'Arles. A second monograph, ‘The Four Pillars’, was published in 2022.

Durst now works as an editorial photographer for leading publications and teaches at the University of Texas College of Fine Arts.

Host Bio:
Jess Baxter is Assistant Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, where she is part of Tate’s Photography Acquisitions Committee. As one of the British Art Network’s Emerging Curators for 2023, she worked on the exhibition A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography, and has curated displays of Deana Lawson, Joel Meyerowitz and Francesca Woodman. Publications include Lieko Shiga (2023) and an upcoming book on medieval and contemporary art practices (2024). She is currently working on Tate’s Leigh Bowery show (opening February 2025).

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