Photography has come to symbolize the extremes of contemporary society. It is deeply personal, and yet thoroughly public. Freeing at times, yet also limiting. Expressive, yet culturally dominant. Pleasurable, but worrying. There is affection for photography, but we are, or ought to be, suspicious of its power and manipulations. If we are dependent upon the photographic image, as so many have claimed over the last century, this dependence gives us mixed feelings.

Across three cities and six institutions The Lives and Loves of Images explores how these tensions shape our understanding and appreciation of photography. A series of exhibitions, each thematically distinct, considers the hold, good and bad, which photographs have over us, viewers and image makers alike.