A new photography exhibition dedicated to hidden stories of identity and belonging has opened to audiences in Brighton, according to local outlet The Argus, promising a body of work that looks past the surface of portraiture toward the private negotiations of selfhood that rarely reach the gallery wall.

The exhibition's framing — identity and belonging as subjects to be uncovered rather than declared — places it within one of the most sustained currents in contemporary British photography. From the documentary traditions that shaped post-war practice to the more intimate, collaborative approaches of recent decades, photographers have repeatedly returned to the question of how a person's sense of self registers on film or sensor. A show that promises "hidden stories" signals an interest in what sits outside the frame of mainstream representation: the migrant, the outsider, the community forming itself at the edge of the frame.

What distinguishes an exhibition of this kind is rarely its theme, which many group shows share, but the discipline of its looking. The strongest work on identity resists illustration; it does not merely depict its subjects but grants them the complexity of people who have agreed to be seen. If the photographers here achieve that — and the show's emphasis on stories that were previously hidden suggests they have worked to earn their subjects' trust — then the exhibition joins a growing institutional willingness to treat questions of belonging as central, not peripheral, to photographic practice.

Regional press attention matters for shows of this scale. Coverage in The Argus indicates that the exhibition is reaching beyond the gallery-going public into the wider Brighton community, an audience whose own stories of identity and place may well be among those the photographs address. Photography exhibitions about belonging tend to succeed or fail on exactly this point: whether the people photographed, and people like them, come through the door.

The exhibition also arrives at a moment when galleries across the UK are reassessing whose stories their walls hold. Institutions that once presented photography as a record of elsewhere increasingly program work rooted in the communities that surround them. A show about identity and belonging in Brighton participates in that shift, and its reception will say something about how far regional venues have moved toward programming that treats local lives as subjects worthy of serious photographic examination.

No closing date has been announced in the available report, and visitors hoping to see the work should check with the venue for details of opening hours and any related events. What is clear is the intent: to bring photographs of lives previously kept from view into public circulation, and to let those images do the slow work of widening who gets recognized. Whether the exhibition secures a longer life — a tour, an accompanying publication, a permanent home in a collection — will depend on how audiences and institutions respond in the weeks ahead.