Fotofestiwal 2025

What do people believe and how do they organize their ideas about reality? What orders do they create to understand and tame the complex universe?

Our lives are shaped by the various systems with which we try to order our daily lives, but they often also bring oppression and control. Their action, though sometimes invisible, determines our decisions and the way we explain the world to ourselves and what we consider to be the norm.

The artists invited to the Main Program explore our mechanisms of looking at the world and examine the systems in which we function – from the global interconnectedness of the capitalist economy, to systems of power, grand historical narratives and atypical religious beliefs, to looking for cosmic signs in everyday public space.

Fotofestiwal 2025 features more than 25 exhibitions of the Main Program and the City Program, and more than 30 exhibitions within the accompanying SpinOFF program. There will also be dozens of events such as slideshows in the Old Market and music events.

During the upcoming edition we will open for you the first in Europe and the second in the world exhibition of photographs by Yorgos Lanthimos, the leading artist of the Greek «weird wave», director of some of the most exceptional and most widely discussed films of the 21st century: "Dogtooth", "The Killing of a Sacred Deer", "Poor Things".

Fourteen exhibitions will be shown at Art_Inkubator – our festival center – including one of the most interesting exhibitions of last year's Rencontres d'Arles festival, awarded the prestigious Prix Elysee, Debi Cornwall's “Model Citizens.”

Still in the Main Program, we will see projects focusing on the systems and beliefs around which we develop our image of the world. This includes Michał Sita’s photographs of historical reconstructions of Polish events by Polish people; Hoda Afshar’s project about the wind that, according to an ancient Iranian belief, can possess people; and the work of Salvatore Vitale, exploring the neocolonial traits of virtual realities.

The main program concludes with a look at the political situation in the Middle East, this time through Maen Hammad’s proposal, focusing on the tenacity of young Palestinian people under Isreali occupation; and with the flaneuristic vision of Máté Bartha over the cityscape, as an attempt to find structure and meaning in this often arbitrary world.

The Fotofestiwal is also a pretext to explore less-known Lodz. This year, a unique YMCA pool will be open. There, American artist Jason Fulford, will prepare a site-specific installation based on photographs from the book “Lots of Lots.”

Speaking of spaces that make up the city’s history, the main weekend of Fotofestiwal will be filled with the rhythm and beats of Ravekjavik, our partner festival, which is organised in the post-industrial spaces of former textile warehouses.

And these are just the first few items, from the whole range of attractions! For more, visit:

www.fotofestiwal.com