Athens Photo Festival: A polyphonic celebration of images on the Benaki Museum

The Athens Photo Festival is the biggest worldwide images occasion in Greece. This 12 months, 70 artists and inventive collectives from 30 nations are collaborating in the primary exhibition, which unfolds throughout 3,000 sq. metres, occupying all of the areas of the Benaki Museum on Pireos.

With a transparent give attention to modern photographic creation, the Festival takes a probing take a look at a few of the key points, challenges and complexities of our occasions, foregrounding social, political and intercultural issues.

Photographic works, interactive installations, screenings, archival materials and artwork publications supply a wealthy panorama of what preoccupies photographic apply in the present day.

Manolis Moresopoulos is the Artistic Director of the Athens Photo Festival:

First of all, what pursuits us is that the customer ought to wander by way of the exhibitions. There is not any single overarching theme into which all of the exhibitions and works introduced are subsumed, nor are there separate thematic classes. In essence, we invite guests to have a look at images not solely as a standalone work, however to see the way it acquires that means and the way it coexists inside the house: how one artist’s work enters into dialogue with that of different artists and the way connections or ruptures between them come up.

We are additionally eager to boost a number of questions that transcend what makes {photograph}. We have an interest within the position images is requested to play in in the present day’s social actuality. When does {a photograph} change into an archive? When does it change into testimony? When does it change into fiction? When does it change into a political act? When does it change into a type of protest?

In actuality, these are paths that intertwine, resurface and actively intersect all through the go to. So, repeatedly, the route confronts us with points whose themes the artists draw from in the present day’s actuality: questions of displacement, armed battle, local weather change, reminiscence, identification and self-determination, and so forth.

The foremost exhibition is complemented by an attractive public programme of screenings, academic actions, talks, guided excursions and parallel occasions, fostering dialogue and public participation.

In parallel, the Festival develops devoted platforms that function each through the occasion and all year long, increasing its scope to the promotion of rising artists, to photographic and publishing apply, to hyperlinks with the city cloth and to the event of inventive analysis:

Photography itself and the medium as such are continuously shifting. Let us not neglect that images is by nature a stressed medium. It is inextricably linked to know-how and is consistently known as upon to soak up the modifications know-how brings. By extension, the identical applies to the artists themselves, who in the end are invited to experiment and combine new applied sciences into their apply.

In the identical method, the Festival nurtures this dialog. We invite guests to maneuver by way of the exhibition with out feeling the necessity to decode what every {photograph} means in isolation. What pursuits us is the coexistence of the works, and it’s all the time fascinating – additionally by way of our dialogue with the viewers – to see the factors of identification every viewer seeks out and finally discovers for themselves, and the completely different questions that the assorted exhibitions increase.

The Athens Photo Festival is organised by the Hellenic Centre of Photography and hosted on the Benaki Museum on Pireos. It runs till 26 July.

This 12 months’s version is devoted to the reminiscence of Stavros Moresopoulos, founder and driving power of the competition for many years.

IN PARALLEL WITH THE MAIN PROGRAMME

Young Greek Photographers Programme

The exhibition “Young Greek Photographers”, curated by Marilia Fotopoulou, is introduced in parallel with the Main Programme of the Athens Photo Festival 2026 on the Benaki Museum. The programme serves as a platform for showcasing, networking and growing the inventive apply of rising creators as much as the age of 35. This 12 months’s exhibition options the work of 14 artists, chosen from 400 proposals submitted by way of an open name.

The artists chosen are: Αστεριάννα Αρβανίτη Αψωκάρδου, Δανάη Δανίκα, Καλλιόπη Δημητρακοπούλου, Μαριάνθη Ευθυμίου, Μανταλένα Γεωργάτου, Κωνσταντίνος Γκόνης, Νίκος Κουτούζος, Νίκος Μοτσιόπουλος & Λάμπρος Τυρλής, Αλεξάνδρα Παπούτση, Χρυσάνθη Πιπίνη, Βαλερί Ρουμελιώτη Οττάβυ, Ελισσάβετ Σίκαλου, Ιωάννα Σπέντζου

Book Program

The Book Program, curated by Sylvia Sachini, approaches the photobook as an autonomous type of inventive expression and storytelling. Through exhibitions, displays, talks and two awards, it showcases modern photographic publishing, with an emphasis on impartial artwork publications and hybrid editorial ventures.

Satellite Program

The Satellite Program, curated by Sylvia Sachini, extends the competition past the museum house by way of collaborations with impartial venues, foundations and cultural establishments within the metropolis. It creates a parallel community of exhibitions and actions, strengthening the competition’s ties with Athens’ modern cultural panorama.

Athens Photo Research Center The newly established Athens Photo Research Center is a platform for analysis, documentation and the manufacturing of data within the subject of images and modern visible tradition. Through residency programmes, academic actions and worldwide collaborations, it seeks to attach inventive apply with analysis and interdisciplinary dialogue.

Artists within the Main Exhibition Programme

Sara Abbaspour | Verdiana Albano | Sama Alshaibi | Κατερίνα Αγγελοπούλου | Taysir Batniji | Hicham Benohoud | Olga Cafiero | Frida Lisa Carstensen Jersø | Γιώργος Γιατρομανωλάκης | Sean Cham | Sara De Brito Faustino | Colin Delfosse | Mathias Depardon | Antone Dolezal | Thana Faroq | Francesca Giaitzoglou Watkinson | Florence Goupil | Mohamed Hassan | Sadie Cook & Jo Pawlowska | Lisa Karnadi | Abhishek Khedekar | Viktor Koen | Elliott Kreyenberg | Laurence Kubski | Camille Lévêque | Morgan Levy | Jinyong Lian | Νίκος Μάρκου | Justin Maxon & Dr. H. “Herukhuti” Sharif Williams | Serhii Melnychenko | Randa Mirza | Δημήτρης Μυτάς | Alvin Ng | Musuk Nolte | Laura Pannack | Alana Perino | Maria Quigley | Hashem Shakeri | Arhant Shrestha | Bharat Sikka | Hristina Tasheva | Tanya Traboulsi | Varvara Uhlik | Eva Vei | Sasha Velichko | Joselito Verschaeve | Carmen Winant | Cemre Yeşil Gönenli | Tereza Zelenkova

Athens Photo Festival takes place on the Benaki Museum.