Dressed to impress

Clementine Schneidermann contributed some of the most striking images to last year's Women In Focus exhibition at the National Museum Wales, and the series from which they were taken, It's Called Ffasiwn, is now on display in Bristol.

As the Guardian's Paula Cocozza observes, the project was an extraordinary collaboration between Schneidermann, creative director Charlotte James and local children (mainly girls) in Merthyr Tydfil, who crafted their own colourful costumes and who, in the resulting photos, "look at odds with the world around them, but at the same time blend into it".

On the one hand, there's something unnerving about the incongruity of kids dressed up in formal clothes, especially in that Valleys setting; on the other, though, the pictures hint at the liberating power of creativity and of playing a role - at how they can enable people to transcend their circumstances.

(Thanks to Emma for the link.)