If You Leave: The world’s best single image photography

The best documentary photographers build compelling stories through weaving images together. They spend days, months, years getting to know the people, communities and issues they’re documenting, adding a new piece to the story with each picture.

But what if you had to grab people’s attention, hold their gaze and say everything you wanted to say with just one photograph?

Photo by Monica Forss (selected by Huck)

Photo by Rafeal M. Milani

If You Leave celebrates the best of contemporary photography which speaks in a single image – separate from any body of work. The 2016 IYL Showcase draws together twenty of the best single shots, selected by a panel of judges including Huck, Dazed and Confused, Aperture Foundation, and The Photographers Gallery, from thousands of entries made by photographers from across the globe.

The third edition of the Showcase takes 20 photographs, selected by 20 co-curators to be showcased in 20 distinct venues around London before departing for New York in January 2017. But you can see the full selection of 200 images on If You Leave’s Instagram and grab prints here.

Photo by Esben Bøg – Jensen

Photo by Federico Ortega Sanchez

For the first time, the Showcase has a base at Shoreditch’s Red Gallery, a new creative pop-up space that provides photographers with the opportunity to meet, communicate and learn. It offers visitors a wide-ranging series of talks, workshops, masterclasses, book launches, digital and analogue printing services, work spaces, film screenings and portfolio reviews that will take place during the course of the pop-up.

Photo by Angeles Peña

Find out more about the If You Leave Showcase 2016 and pop-up in London, November 30 to December 21 at Red Gallery’s The White Room.

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