Various venues, Brighton Teenagers denied a say in the referendum offer a fresh perspective towards our relationship with Europe, while elsewhere are abandoned refugee camps and the spectre of terror

Would Karl Marx, if he were a 15-year-old boy today, born in Brighton to a half-Polish, half-Iranian family, start his manifesto with the line, “A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Brexit?” Some of Brighton and Hove’s teenagers would put their signature under this statement. At this year’s Brighton Photo Biennial,13-to-16-year-olds raise their concerns and confusions about this spectre through their photographic works, in a section called Why Are We Leaving?. None of them were old enough to vote in the June 2016 referendum.

The title of the biennial is A New Europe. It explores Brexit and a permanently reshaped Europe through photography and video works across eight venues in Brighton. It also reveals many untold stories – such as those teenagers’.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Brexit diary ... Tereza Červeňová’s image of the White Cliffs of Dover. Photograph: Tereza Červeňová

A close up of a button on a fruit machine on Brighton Pier shows a young finger about to press “start”. The photographer, aged 13, says that she wanted to show how Brexit is like a gamble – people pushed a button without knowing what the results would really be. When I asked the teenage photographers how they imagine the UK five years from now, they said “more police control, expensive travel, expensive food”, with one of them adding, “I think it will be much harder to see my grandma who lives in Germany.” They can’t even imagine studying or working in the EU.

Shoair Mavlian, the curator of the biennial and the director of Photoworks, says that the event is not trying to investigate the process of Brexit, but to give an opportunity for people to talk about it. There are public forums and performances taking place every week until the end of the biennial. Uta Kögelsberger’s work, which features portraits of and words by people who will leave the UK because of Brexit, will be shown on Jubilee Square.

“The title of the biennial has been selected to be purposefully ambiguous,” says Mavlian. “The idea of a new Europe has meant different things at different times. Hitler used this term, then after the fall of the iron curtain it had a completely different meaning. Europe is not fixed, it’s always changing.”

The biennial shows evidence of the change. Vintage photographs from the Cross Channel Photographic Mission archive of the late 1980s show the construction of the Channel Tunnel. Nine photographers’ works illustrate how the construction changed the landscape, and show the people who made it happen: including Jean-Claude Juncker, now president of the European Commission.

Bill Brandt’s images from the 1930s document English life across the class divide, and are recognised as one of the first attempts to photograph the nation. Tereza Červeňová, a UK-based European artist, has taken a photograph every day since EU referendum – a diary unnervingly filled with important events from recent European history. She was in Nice on the day of the 14 July 2016 terror attack, for instance, and staying near London Bridge when there was a terror attack the following June.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Fade to blue ... Emeric Lhuisset’s European cyanotypes. Photograph: Emeric Lhuisset

Emeric Lhuisset tells stories of different generations who migrated to Europe from the Middle East on his cyanotypes – a photographic process that creates a blue and white image by using sunlight to expose silhouette or shadows on to treated paper. They will completely fade into blue blocks one day – either merging into Europe, perhaps, or disappearing.

Best known for her fashion photography, Harley Weir’s exhibition depicts the now-demolished camp in Calais known as the Jungle. She focuses on the fragile structures, tents, pieces of wood nailed to each other, and ropes and nets knotted together so that toothbrushes and frying pans have a place to be hung. Without the presence of people in states of resilience and despair, it’s an eerie memorial to this pressure point of the refugee crisis.

The biennial demonstrates that Brexit and its connected issues, including the migration crisis and the rise of the far right, have provided rich material for photographers. However, most if not all the works come from the left/liberal perspective, which gives the impression of artists preaching to the converted. The director, Mavlian, says that “no sides were taken,” but the voices of those enthused by Brexit are few and far between. Perhaps that’s for another time – because what the biennial does show is that the story of Brexit is only just beginning.