UNSEEN BEAUTIFUL is the title of a new exhibition which opens today with more than 700 photographs showing favourite secret places in Darlington – and your help is required to select the best.

The images have been submitted by local photographers as part of the Darlington Arts Festival and all are on show in the library until May 29. Visitors to the art gallery can vote for their favourite so that a winner can be chosen – for that reason, none of the images in the exhibition (or on today's pages) is credited so you have to vote for what you see rather than the person who has taken it.

The competition is being run by documentary photographer Joanne Coates, who lives in Teesdale. "It is about parts of Darlington that people value but that other people don't know about," she says. "If people were stuck, I said what three places come into your head when you think about Darlington. For me, I love the auction market, the train station and the covered market, but a lot of people seem to like the more industrial parts of the town."

Many of the entrants have given the heritage of the town a new twist.

To support the exhibition, Joanne is putting on free photography and text workshops with Nicola Golighty, a graphic designer. The first one is on Wednesday followed by others one Tuesday, May 28 and Wednesday, May 29. They run from 11am to 2pm, and anyone can drop in. A closing event starts at 5pm on May 29, which will include the announcement of the winner.

So how many of these places can you recognise, and which ones would you vote for?