Fotofestiwal 2023

HOPE
In the Festival Centre at Art_Inkubator, exhibitions from the Hope program will be presented. These are international projects that encourage us to look closer at inspiring people, bold artists, powerful communities and the actions they take in defiance of common, fatalistic narratives about our reality. The words of American writer and activist Rebecca Solnit have inspired us: hope calls for action; action is impossible without hope. We have invited curators and artists to work with us and create seven group and individual exhibitions. Most of them have been designed especially for the 22nd Fotofestiwal and depict various forms of resistance, support, and cooperation in Eastern and Western Europe, South America, and Middle East. The exhibitions that have been put together to reflect this year’s Festival theme are art projects that change the way we look at the contemporary world and prove that even in the times of the deepest darkness and in the cracks of uncertainty, we can develop some hidden positive scripts. The program is led by Marta Szymańska and Krzysztof Candrowicz from Fotofestiwal.

Here you will see:
→ Eléonore Lubna i Louis Matton, Ipáamamu – Stories of Wawaim, curator: Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo
→ Ritual Inhabitual Collective, Oro verde, curator: Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo
→ Nadège Mazars, Mama Coca, curator: Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo
→ group exhibition In Our Hands, artists: Ursula Biemann, Rami Hara, AVAH Collective, curators: Bettina Freimann, Sithara Pathirana
→ group exhibition On the verge, artists: Cian Burke, Mark Duffy, Pauline Hisbacq, Julia Klewaniec, Alice Pallot, Daniel Szalai and Ugo Woatzi, curators: Marta Szymańska, Maja Dyrehauge Gregersen, Giangavino Pazzola.

HIGHLIGHTS
The program will also include several exhibitions that are not related to the main theme, including AREA: ART ON THE DANCEFLOOR. Warhol, Basquiat and Co. Volker Hinz’s large-format, dynamic and daring photographs will invite us to learn about the history of the nightclub which would light up New York’s Lower Manhattan in the 1980s. The club used to undergo a spectacular transformation every six weeks, and its visitors were invited to dress up to match ever new mottos such as “Food”, “Fashion” or “Faith”. In these photographs, we will rediscover some of the stars of the world art scene of that time, including Warhol, Basquiat, Madonna and Grace Jones, right next to every man transforming into someone else for one spectacular night.

The premiere of new photographs by Zbigniew Libera, created especially for this edition of Fotofestiwal, will be a strong highlight of the program. “The exhibition at Galeria Wschodnia marks the artist’s return to Łódź, a city to which his work has been linked since he became a part of the Kultura Zrzuty group,” says Daniel Muzyczuk, curator of the exhibition. “Another important aspect of this return is the location. After all, Wschodnia is the legendary space of the independent gallery movement and the city’s last non-commercial art gallery established in the early 1980s.”

Another major solo exhibition will present the works of Grzegorz Przyborek, a Łódź-based artist, much appreciated in Poland and abroad. It will be a review of his entire artistic output, starting from the first steps in Łódź and in Arles, France, to his most recent works, which have not been shown anywhere else yet. The retrospective exhibition titled Silence will be presented at the City Art Gallery in Łódź – Art Propaganda Centre [Miejska Galeria Sztuki w Łodzi – Ośrodek Propagandy Sztuki].

MINSK AND ODESSA IN ŁÓDŹ
This year, once again, we have invited the curators of our two friend photography festivals, Month of Photography in Minsk (Belarus) and Odesa Photo Days (Ukraine), to collaborate with us on the program. Both those events cannot be organised in their respective countries due to political reasons, so we are preparing a huge space in the heart of post-industrial Łódź, the OFF Piotrkowska complex, to present the works of Belarusian and Ukrainian artists, among others.

Here we will find an exhibition that shows a summary of social and political changes, as well as protest activities in Ukraine, Georgia, Iran, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan over the last 30 years. #inbetweenland will talk about the specific state of suspension in which part of the Belarusian society is.

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THE BEST OF CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY
Moreover, Fotofestiwal’s Open Program offers an overview of the most interesting phenomena in contemporary photography. It includes six projects selected by the international jury from thousands of submissions from all over the world. This showcase – a truly impressive visual set of projects – touches upon a variety of issues: the reality of the Persian Gulf countries, man’s attitude towards water in Sierra Leone, and the life and problems of the coastal communities in Colombia.

Open Program:
Santiago Escobar-Jaramillo / El pez muere por la boca
Chloé Milos Azzopardi / Écosystèmes
Ngadi Smart / Wata Na Life
Gabriele Cecconi / TiàWùK
Io Sivertsen / Growing pains, thoughts on the climate crisis
Agnieszka Sejud / Mimesis

A special Talent Futures slideshow will feature projects that are close to contemporary Europe: Ihar Hancharuk’s research into the phenomenon of military propaganda that has been present in Belarus for years now, Lisa Bukreyeva’s and Marcin Kruk’s projects on the war in Ukraine, as well as Kinga Wrona’s series of photographs about the eruption of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the island of La Palma. The slideshow and group exhibition titled On the Verge, a part of the Hope Program, have been created thanks to Fotofestiwal’s collaboration with Futures Photography, an international platform connecting almost twenty photographic institutions from all around Europe.

AND MUCH MORE
During the ten days of the Festival, the audience will be also invited to attend presentations of photography books and exhibitions organised by partner galleries, including a group exhibition dedicated to Bogdan Konopka at the Gallery of the Łódź Photographic Society (ŁTF), and Chris Niedenthal’s retrospective exhibition made together with the Museum of the City of Łódź. As always, the program will also include film screenings, discussions and concerts.

The key visual of this year’s edition was prepared by Kaja Kaja “mlode studio” and Dominik Murzyn. Photos selected for posters was made by Marisya Myanovska, Ugo Woatzi and Ritual Inhabitual Collective.