Showing the power of the image

Last year's Summer Open exhibition proved so successful the Association Of Photographers gallery has now made it into an annual event. When it says 'open', it means it. As one of the few photographic exhibitions in the country to which professionals and nonprofessionals alike can enter and unrestricted by subject matter or time-scales, the result is an appealing diversity of images.

Voted The Best In Show, Bijan Seylsepour's Dog And The Horizon was part of his final degree show, yet holds its own against submissions by Network photojournalists Tim Hetherington --with his stark images of Sierra Leone - and Stuart Freedman's Hutu Boy With Machete Wound. Similarly, commercial and personal work mix with a surprising fluidity. Jeremy Hopley's The Boudoir, taken on the set of a Barbie commercial, complements the mixed collage of family pictures and 3D objects in Luisa Vasques's Mom And Dad. It is the images not taken by professionals which are perhaps the most empathic. The photograph of two old men in a hospital, shrivelled flowers on the window sill echoing the hours of tedium and the final years of their lives, was taken by Dr K Brown on his ward.

Although they need no title, the black and white portrait of a man in his mid-30s is transformed by the title Rhodri Before His Wife Moved Out. Adrian Fisk's image of a young Indian woman with bandaged wrists (pictured right) becomes tragic when it is known they were broken by her husband due to an insufficient dowry. It is images such as this one which you wish had an exhibition of their own. Indeed, Kate Schermerhorn and Zed Nelson's submissions were taken from their own shows.

The wealth of photographs here should prove inspiration enough for all burgeoning and established talent to come forward. The AOP Open creates a democratic space where a photograph can hang entirely on its own merit. Because it disregards the CV of its photographer, it is a true test of the power of the image itself.