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.

Recent Stories

"The situation is fucked up, but people are fucking great!"
Kharkiv, Ukraine on the first day of Russian invasion
Pavel Dorogoy
One Hundred Yards From Home
A photographic exploration of family relationships and an inquiry into connection, history and the fragility of the tie between mother and daughter.
Cheryl Newman
Submerged Landscapes
According to the Climate Central app, Thanet, the UK is likely to become an island again within the next decade. In this ongoing project, King documented the affected areas before they are submerged, using the materiality of the sea within the production of the work.
Melanie King
Small Town Inertia
Jim Mortram’s Small Town Inertia is an ongoing project which shines a light on the real life consequences the so-called “A-word” is continuing to have on communities, over a decade since its introduction. It wreaks havoc on the most vulnerable in our society and it targets those who can least afford basic necessities.
Jim Mortram
Missed Care
The referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU was one of the most divisive moments in modern history — back in 2016 and ever since then, the country felt more polarised than ever before with a clearly growing sense of “us” and “them”. People were either unable to or would refuse to see some of the good points that the other side was making. The Remain side was branded “Project Fear” as they were providing predictions of what would happen. Some of these didn’t happen, but others, unfortunately,
Gianluca Urdiroz
Children of the war from evacuated maternity hospitals
First children of war are born. Maternity hospitals are evacuated to the basements in Kyiv and suburbs because of Russian Attacks with bombs. Neonatologists, reanimations, baby care sp
Sergey Baksheev
Someone's Rubbish
The project is a case study of what we value, as a society but also as individuals, and draws a comparison between what we once felt useful to buy or take as it served a purpose but it no longer does.
Chloe Juno
While I Was Sleeping
While I Was Sleeping is the third part of a trilogy of projects that came out of that shift (the other two being After the Fact and Endless Plain). These projects, by and large, use documentary techniques and the resulting images look like documentary photographs, but they are not intended to document an event.
Tony Fouhse
I want it all to go back to the way it was before
Pippa Healy is a photographer, artist and printmaker based in London. Her raw, diaristic practice responds to events that have occurred in her life, therefore it has a unique sense of authenticity. Healy’s work references loss, grief, longing and violence and it’s rather difficult to pigeonhole as every
Pippa Healy
Beach Boulevard
Brian O’Neill is an Illinois-based sociologist and photographer whose work looks at the human condition and society’s relationship to nature. He investigates the various meanings of “industry” and how it affects local communities and environments. Beach Boulevard, his first photographic publication, is a small spiral-bound book in a small edition of 100. Rather than probing the typical documentary question “what’s going on here” it delves deeper and wonders how we actually got to our current sta
Brian O'Neil

mnngful Originals

mnngful Members

Stephen Leslie
UK
,

Film director, screenwriter and photographer based in London "About 20 years ago I started to take photographs with a small point and shoot camera. What began as a simple way to keep visually alert in between directing jobs soon morphed in to a daily diary of images and eventually became an obsession I've been struggling to contain ever since."

Zak Dimirtov
UK
,
London

Photographic artist, writer and educator Having successfully completed an MA in Photography Arts at the University of Westminster and a BA (Hons) Photography at the Arts University Bournemouth, he is now pursuing a PGCE in Art and Design at UCL Institute of Education. Zak’s practice is concerned with memory, mortality, loss, and time. He has worked at various art schools, universities, galleries and photo labs as well as contributed to written publications (ASX, Der Greif, Paper Journal, and others).

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.

Sabrina Jeblaoui
DE
,
Berlin

Documentary and street portrait photographer based in Berlin. Started discovering the role electronic and techno music played within the party scene in Berlin since she moved there in 2017 and has decided to take photographs of people in front of clubs. NachtClubsBerlin is Sabrina’s first complete photo project. It gathered more than 28K followers on its Instagram account and caught the attention of several magazines, newspapers, as well as TV channels such as ZDF MorgenMagazin, Tagesspiegel, Ze.tt, Mix Mag, Vice, and more.

Nathalie Bertrams
GR
,
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.

Lewis Bush
UK
,

Photographer, educator and curator working across media and platforms to visualise the activities of powerful organisations, practices, and technologies. Since 2012 his practice has explored issues ranging from the aggressive redevelopment of London, to the systemic inequalities of the art world. Recent works include Shadows of the State, which examines the democratic deficit of intelligence gathering, and Wv.B which examines the dark histories of space exploration. He is currently working on a long-term project about computer vision which runs in parallel with an ESRC funded PhD at the London School of Economics. He is also course leader of the MA Photojournalism and Documentary Photography (online) course at London College of Communication.

Nikita Ghate
UK
,
London

I’m a London based Architect turned photographer. My work, although not limited to, tends to heavily explore ‘place attachment’ between people and the built/un-built environment around them. I like to deeply observe and capture the brilliance of everyday life, that we sometimes tend to oversee.

Johan Brooks
JP
,
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.

Jan Enkelmann
UK
,
London

Documentary, street and travel photographer He is dividing his time between commercial work and personal projects. Most of Jan’s photography work is concerned with observations of people in public spaces.

Lewis Greener
UK
,
London

Geordie in London. Youth and community worker who takes photos and film. Mainly b&w just because thats what darkroom I've got access too.

Onur Tatar
TR
,
Çanakkale

Photographer based in Turkey, was born in 1984 in Canakkale. In 2008, he graduated from the Department of Photography of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Dokuz Eylul University (DEU) and with a Master of Arts degree at the DEU Institute of Fine Arts Department of Photography in 2021. Onur completed his PhD in Ege University Social Sciences Institute Radio Television and Film Department in which his thesis Hypertext and the Changing Aesthetics in Photographic Art. He works as an associate professor at the Adnan Menderes University Radio and Television Department, teaches photography and aesthetics. His artistic works have been exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions.

David Lintern
UK
,
Kingussie

Photojournalist and writer working across the outdoor and environmental sectors, with over a decade of experience creating stories for organisations and magazines including National Trust for Scotland, Visit Cairngorms, John Muir Trust, BBC, the Guardian, Slow Ways as well as most of the UK outdoor press. I’m particularly interested in the links between place and people, and between natural and cultural history. David also works privately as a photo tutor and guide across the Highlands, and the author of The Big Rounds.

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
,
Leicester

Photographer based in Leicester UK

Daniel Hinks
CN
,

Documentary photographer constantly fascinated by the human condition. I take on stories that I genuinely believe in, something that can pique my interest and curiosity, turning that energy outwards into creating a substantial body of work and concentrating on the resilience of the human spirit. I have a profound belief that the still image can change people’s minds. Even in today’s forever changing, fast-paced world of now! Gaining access to my subjects is imperative as it helps to achieve clarity and provides me with an opportunity for creative freedom.

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.

mnngful is here to support the meaningful stories they tell.

Read more