Chance Encounters in The Valley of Lights

May 18, 2023

Chance Encounters in the Valley of Lights tells the story of an unsolved extraterrestrial case from 1980s Todmorden, West Yorkshire. Photographer Rik Moran combines original imagery with never-before-seen archival material to investigate the possible alien abduction of PC Alan Godfrey. In illuminating one of small-town England’s most unlikely protagonists, Chance Encounters unearths another other-worldly mystery along the way.

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mnngful Originals

mnngful Members

Verity Adriana
UK
,

Visual artist who uses light, installation and photography to investigate the phenomenology of the metaphysical and existential. She has been a practicing and exhibiting artist for over a decade. Adriana was born in Hull, UK, and grew up around the world wherever her mother found work, including Spain, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Adriana returned to Hull independently at the age of 14 to see herself through her final years at school and went onto establish herself in the regional arts community.

Cheryl Newman
UK
,
London

Artist and independent curator of photography living in London. She recently completed and MA in Photography Arts at the University of Westminster (Distinction) Her personal practice explores her history though archive and family images and the environment of memory For the past three years she has been working with the Gaia Foundation to commission and curate We Feed the World, a photographic global adventure documenting the lives of family and peasant farmers for an exhibition which premiered at the Barge house Gallery, London, in Autumn 2018. She curated 209 Women, one of the highest profile exhibitions of 2018 in which all the female MP’s in the UK Parliament were photographed by women photographers to celebrate 100 years of suffrage and which moved to Open Eye Gallery Liverpool in February 2019 and is now part of the Parliamentary Art collection. For more than fifteen years she was the Photography Director of the award-winning Telegraph Magazine where she raised the profile of the magazine and commissioned intelligent and inventive photography worldwide.

Melanie King
UK
,
Ramsgate

Multi-Disciplinary Artist. Co-Director of super/collider, Lumen Studios and founder of the London Alternative Photography Collective. Melanie is Lecturer In Photography at Canterbury Christ Church University, and a practice-based PhD Candidate at the Royal College of Art. She is represented by the Land Art Agency. To purchase original prints, you can visit the Land Art Agency and Argentea Gallery websites. Books are available via the website store, and monthly limited edition postcards are available on Patreon.

Timo Knorr
DE
,
Hamburg

Documentary photographer focused on the photographic research of groups that move in a field of tension of the social conflicts of the current time. I am looking for the questions: How do we want to live today, how do we want to eat and how can we make our world a little bit better.

Milda Vysniauskaite
LT
,

Designer and photographer, after her studies at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague, she continues her professional career back in Lithuania. She works with themes of gender, LGBTQ+ and masculinity. The main subject of her photographs is the male gender and social constructs around it.

Valeria Mongelli
IT
,

Documentary photographer and journalist based between Belgium and Italy. In her documentary research, Valeria focuses on social and environmental issues, the outskirts, and the underground. Valeria's work has been published internationally at Le Monde, El Pais, Le Vif / L'Express, Il Sole 24 Ore, The Diplomat, Asia Times and other outlets. Her work is distributed by Studio Hans Lucas, a French agency partner of AFP, Reuters, Redux, Contrasto, and others, and Zuma Press.

Fiona Neil
UK
,
Moreton In Marsh

When receiving an old fashioned Canon camera at 16 I realised the power of showing people different perspectives of the world, documenting them with photography. I am passionate and dedicated about producing emotional, resourceful content that can educate and document the world for people.

Nicola Lewis-Dixon
UK
,
Preston

Multidisciplinary artist based in Preston, who comes from a predominately photographic background and has just completed a photography MA at UCLan. Lewis-Dixon’s work is autobiographical and considers the social construct of women’s lived experience and shifting identity in today's society. Lewis-Dixon’s approach is research lead, highly expressive and conceptual in her visual output. Lewis-Dixon’s work explores and tests multiple methodological processes such as documentary, experimental, alternative darkroom processes, embroidery and most recently multi-sensory installations requiring video and soundscape. In her most recent work, Nicola takes us on her own healing journey, reclaiming her body following cervical cancer and hysterectomy. Both projects ‘Goosebumps’ and ‘Healing with Nature’ are ongoing as they are used therapeutically to rediscover her own broken alienated body and heal.

nick linnett
UK
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Leicester

Photographer based in Leicester UK

Annie Y Saldana
PR
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San Juan

Fine Art photographer, educator, curator. Founder at PRISMA Art Projects.

Johan Brooks
JP
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Tokyo

Documentary and street photographer based out of Tokyo, Japan. Born in the UK, he grew up in NYC, and eventually found his way to Japan where he has been living for over 10 years. He is a member of the VoidTokyo photography collective. His photography is on permanent display at the Crunchyroll HQ in San Francisco and was recently exhibited at Terranova House in Tokyo.

Elena Kalyuzhnaya
RU
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St. Petersburg

Documentary photographer based in Saint-Petersburg, Russia. Student of Academy of documentary photography “Fotografika” in Saint-Petersburg. Originally from a small town in the south of Russia, Elena appreciates the authenticity of the rural area and its traditions. The human place in society, PTSD emotions, and life in post-war and problematic regions are the main topics of her work. Elena’s work was published in Dodho Magazine, Takie Dela, Republic, and Regnum publishing. Elena is a silver prizer of Budapest international Contest 2020 in the student category. Also, her work was a part of the Ariano Film festival.

Benedict Stenning
FR
,

Documentary photographer whose work is primarily concerned with investigating peoples experiences with their proximal surroundings. Benedict is interested in the relationships we as human beings form with our environs and each other while seeking to subvert perspectives; identifying and capturing liminal spaces to form narratives and provoke an emotional response. Benedict was brought up with the arts from a young age and has an innate appreciation for the powers of story telling. His grandfather, Moran Caplat CBE, was General Manager at Glyndebourne opera house in the Sussex countryside for over 30 years and his father was a stage manager at the BBC and later an associate producer in film.

Brian O'Neil
US
,

Sociologist, currently a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the School of Ocean Futures in the College of Global Futures at Arizona State University. In addition, I am affiliated with the Ocean Nexus Center at the University of Washington’s College of the Environment’s Ocean Nexus Fellows Program.

Nathalie Bertrams
GR
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Athens

I am a freelance photojournalist and National Geographic Explorer reporting on environmental conflicts, human rights and social justice. My work is published in The Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Al Jazeera, BBC, De Groene Amsterdammer and NRC. I also make TV documentaries for Arte.

Stories worth seeing

mnngful is a platform supporting independent documentary photography & photojournalism.

Thanks to passionate storytellers, we learn about matters that otherwise stay neglected. Stories that matter, but have not been covered enough are captured and told by passion-driven photographers and journalists.

They create because they care about the world they live in and tell us about matters beyond our eyesight.Their work is often driven by pure enthusiasm, fuelled by own beliefs and dreams for a better world. That's why such independent work is worth special attention.

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