Eloise Donnelly

Lost in Transit showcases the work of 13 emerging artists in what is the culmination of a nine month collaborative project consisting of preliminary workshops through to production, curation and even the hang. Drawing parallels with The Distance Between exhibition at the Pebbledash Gallery earlier this month, also part of the Photomonth festival, the show considers both temporal and geographical transition, and focuses on themes of change and adaptation.

Despite the artists working so closely together over this period of time, the first thing that strikes you upon entering the gallery is the diversity of responses to this one theme.

Bella Ward's Polaroids, taken over six months on journeys on public transport, convincingly articulated photography's unique ability to capture this theme of transition. Depicting the view as she looks out of the window, the details of her surroundings are lost and we are left with a delicate impression of her experience of travel frozen instantly within the frame. With Polaroid film now out of production, the physical images are themselves stuck in a particular moment in time.

A more sinister consideration of the theme was taken by Murray Ballard, whose stunning images taken in a cryonics facility outside Moscow powerfully convey the chilling geographical, scientific and psychological atmosphere. It was the fine details in these images that really disturbed: the gaudy vibrancy of artificial flowers within an otherwise monochrome graveyard; the inclusion of a photograph of emperor penguins on the wall of the facility canteen; the portrait of the cryogenics scientist surrounded by domestic paraphernalia hanging above an image of a cryonically frozen rat.

Exploration of the evolution of identity played a strong theme within the exhibition, with Helen Warburton's images of a mother and daughter considering the fluidity of filial relationships, while Roxana Allison's images of Britain and Mexico meditated on the complex changing identity of migrants. As the viewer is unaware of the provenance of each image, shapes and forms are resonated in different locations and the seemingly fixed identities of the two nationalities become blurred.

A concern with collaborative shows such as this one is that with each artists pursuing their own projects attempt to shoehorn seemingly unrelated projects into the theme, resulting in a disjointed exhibition with no clear curatorial voice. Yet in Lost in Transit, the sheer variety of responses became a strength, rather than a weakness. It is rare to see such a variety of photographic techniques and traditions explored in the same exhibition, from Nineteenth Century albumen Cartes de Visite to blurred Polaroids and digitally enhanced images. The display showcased a medium in transition, and in this way is a fitting tribute to the medium of photography - itself the result of the fleeting action of light waves hitting paper, a transitory moment.