Tbilisi Photo Festival 2020

The international Tbilisi Photo Festival is back in September 2020 for a new edition. Using photography as a tool to reflect on the most urgent current topics, this philosophy has been shaping the identity of the festival throughout its 11th years of existence. In accordance with this constant preoccupation to raise awareness and broaden the audience’s perspective on most pressing issues, the main theme of the Tbilisi Photo Festival 2020 will be the Covid-19 pandemic and its consequences.

More current than ever, the Covid-19 pandemic is strongly impacting this 11th edition. Despite the evolution of the epidemiological situation which forced the Festival to postpone the Night of Photography, the team is still proud to present a reduced programmation, adapted to the social distancing constraints.

The festival is opening on September 10 with “Bare Life” by Antoine D’Agata. The multi-screen video installation will feature up to 13.000 images taken between March 11 and May 11, 2020 and be set in the premises of the Tbilisi Photography & Multimedia Museum. Shot with a thermal camera, “Bare Life” is presenting a unique and alternative vision of the socio-political implications of the Covid-19 pandemic.

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The Tbilisi Photo Festival launched, during the lockdown, the I_Residency programme. Funded with the support of UNDP Georgia and the government of Sweden, this programme offered to 20 Georgian women visual artists and writers the opportunity to create projects documenting their own stories of isolation or to tell, through images and text, the stories of other women. Combining visual pieces and texts, this series of works form all together precious testimonies of self isolation experiences that would otherwise be silenced.

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The event will consist in the presentation of the projects created in the frame of the I-Residency - encompassing texts, video projects and series of images, with the presence of the artists.

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The festival will close with an online talk by Antoine d’Agata streamed on the Youtube channel of the Tbilisi Photo Festival and live moderated by Nestan Nijaradze.

During the event, d’Agata will discuss his experience when roaming the streets of Paris and various hospitals to document from the first day of confinement the Covid-19 pandemic. Recording in his own way the viral epidemic, d’Agata is giving bodies a central place. Bodies being a leitmotif in his works, his latest project “Bare Life” is also an open door to apprehend his whole career and discuss thematics that are transcending his works.

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Link for Live Event: https://bit.ly/3i7USXB

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The Night of Photography, central event of the 11th edition of the festival, was initially planned to be held on Saturday 12 in Stamba Hotel. After considering several options and formats to adapt to the constraints imposed by the situation, the Tbilisi Photo Festival decided to postpone this major event to not put at risk the health of participants.

The team will work hard to hold the Night of Photography in a more propitious context in order to keep the spirit of this iconic event alive and host its audience in the best and safest conditions.

The Night of Photography in Stamba will be held, but after the restrictions will be re-lifted!