Harmattan - Togo Photo Festival 2025

Founded and directed by Ako Atikossie and Giulia Brivio, Harmattan – Togo Photo Festival aims to provide international visibility and create new opportunities for emerging photographers from Togo and West Africa.

Overview

The Harmattan Festival was born from the desire to explore how photography can become a tool to rethink the African imaginary, building new connections between past and future, between cultural roots and a thriving contemporary art scene.

Every image is an act of storytelling. Every image becomes a story projected into the future, a fragment of reality opposing the instant to affirm a new visual identity. What story do we want to tell? Which narratives define the expressive urgency of the contemporary African art scene?

From December 12 to 14, 2025, Lomé becomes the stage for a new visual dialogue on the contemporary identity of West Africa. The festival’s opening weekend presents three collective exhibitions featuring fifteen Togolese and international artists, hosted at Agnassan – Musée Paul Ahyi, Galerie Artemis, and Jardin Edith Equagoo, accompanied by masterclasses and workshops in the enchanting setting of the Palais de Lomé. The exhibitions will remain open until December 30, 2025.

The project extends beyond the Togolese days. Starting in 2026, the selection of works will become a traveling exhibition in various formats: first stop in Lugano/Paradiso, at Focus Artphilein (February–April 2026), followed by Milan, at Loro Milano (May 2026). A publication edited by Artphilein Editions and Boîte Editions will gather the works and critical essays, offering international visibility to the participating artists.

For centuries, the representation of Africa has been filtered through a colonial lens that turned the other into an object, stripping it of its voice. Today, a new generation of African curators, artists, and thinkers has overturned that perspective, restoring photography to the center of an autonomous language capable of influencing the worlds of contemporary art, fashion, and architecture.

As curator and art historian Osei Bonsu states: “Photography is not just a tool to document reality, but it has the potential to liberate storytellers and give artists the power to rethink the world from scratch.”

This narrative and visionary potential lies at the heart of the festival’s curatorial approach, celebrating photography’s ability to create new visual narratives by blending personal experience, collective memory, and invisible lineages.

Exhibiting artists are Tessilim Adjayi (Togo), Parmenas Awudza (Togo), Delali Ayivi (Togo/UK), Zododo Ekue & Elise Beltz (Togo/France), Fo Kwesi (Togo), Lina Mensah (Togo), Ras Sankara (Togo), Koffi Djifa Seble (Togo), Enok Tsevi (Togo), Wody Yawo (Togo), Kadessi Alassani & Ana Veronica (Togo/Colombia/UK), David Nana Opoku Ansah (Ghana), Ishola Akpo (Bénin), Federica Landi (Italy), Nicola Lo Calzo (Italie/France), Malick Welli and Charlotte Brathwaite (Sénégal/USA).

Harmattan doesn’t end in Togo. The artists’ works will be collected in a catalogue to be released by Artphilein Editions and Boîte Editions in April 2026, and the festival will turn into a traveling exhibition reaching Focus Artphilein in Lugano/Paradiso, Switzerland (February–April 2026), and Loro Milano in Milan, Italy (May 2026).