The Photographers’ Gallery presents FreshFaced+WildEyed 2013, its annual exhibition showcasing the quality and breadth of graduates’ practices from photographic courses across the UK. The exhibition aims to draw attention to innovative new talents from a range of photographic fields and is dedicated to recognising and nurturing new talents. Now in its sixth year, FreshFaced+WildEyed 2013 will continue offering a small group of finalists further development opportunities through the Gallery’s mentorship scheme. For the first time this year the exhibition will incorporate The Wall, the centrepiece of the Gallery’s digital programme, as part of the display.

Twenty-two recent graduates have been selected from an open submission of over 300 applicants. They were chosen by a judging panel of photography experts: Eileen Perrier, artist and lecturer; Zoe Pilger, art critic for The Independent and winner of the 2011 Frieze Writer’s Prize; Niru Ratnam, Head of Gallery Development, Art13 London and Brett Rogers, Director, The Photographers' Gallery. The finalists have all graduated in the past year from BA and MA visual arts courses across the UK with photography and digital media forming the main component of their practice.

Political and socio-economic themes run through many of this year’s projects. Julian Bonnin’s and Harry Mitchell’s works focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the events in and around Tahrir Square in Cairo. Italo Morales, Andrei Nacu and Anastasia Shpilko examine the lingering impact of discord and fighting in Eastern Europe through photographs of everyday life in Sarajevo, Romania, Belarus and Lithuania. Tina Remiz’s and Sunil Shah’s photographs look at issues of migration and cultural identity as experienced in their personal journeys from Latvia and Uganda. Basil Al-Rawi’s series of abandoned urban advertising space reflects on the collapse of the Irish property bubble and Daniel Mayrit uses staged images that copy the aesthetic of Google Street View to question photography’s ability to authentically represent events.

Cultural attitudes and stereotypes towards sexuality and homosexuality are questioned in the works of Tania Olive and Bronia Stewart. Man’s relationship to the natural world is at the centre of Lorna Evans and Kristin Hoell projects while Guillaume Bourieau, Jolanta Dolewska and Joanne Mullins explore the architecture and aesthetics of the spaces we inhabit. Jack Day’s video of commuters and Joachim Fleinert’s animated images of 19th century portraits will be displayed on The Wall as part of the Gallery’s digital programme. Family, nostalgia and investigations into photography itself are all present in the works of Jinkyun Ahn, Iris Brember, Nicolas Feldmeyer and Petra Stenvall.

Brett Rogers, Director, The Photographers’ Gallery, and a member of the judging panel said: The judges were overwhelmed with the exceptional range of work presented to FreshFaced+WildEyed again this year. They deliberated long and hard to select the twenty-two finalists, all of whose work they felt reflected the strength of UK photographic education over the recent year. A propensity to explore a broad range of issues from the political to the personal, approached with imagination, conceptual rigour and visual flair, is evident in all of the selected work. Because of this, the exhibition deserves to attract critical interest from aspiring photographers, artists and collectors as well as the general public.