Singapore International Photography Festival 2026

SIPF is a biennial gathering of minds from around the world with the common pursuit of advancing the art and appreciation of photography. It aims to be a much-needed arena for critical thought and academic discussion on photography in Southeast Asia.

Overview

The 10th Singapore International Photography Festival (SIPF) will run at multiple venues. Co-Founder and Artistic Director of SIPF Gwen Lee has given it the theme, In My End, My Beginning, reflecting on photography as a medium in motion, between memory and forgetting, document and fiction, and evidence and interpretation.

Highlights include Shifting Images, a multi-venue survey showcasing the work of 48 local artists. Beyond its exhibitions, SIPF 2026 serves as a key discursive hub, offering masterclasses and engaging dialogues through the Asia Meet Symposium.

Singapore Index unveils a remarkable early body of work by acclaimed filmmaker and artist Tan Pin Pin, with the majority of the photographs being presented publicly for the first time in over three decades. Created between 1991 and 1992, the series traces the public and private rituals of a nation on the cusp of transformation—from weddings, funerals and religious gatherings to school reunions and community celebrations. With an intimate and observant eye, Tan Pin Pin captures the rhythms of everyday Singapore, revealing moments that are both deeply personal and quietly universal. Rediscovered from her personal archive of nearly 2,800 black-and-white negatives, these photographs invite us to revisit the city through its rituals, memories and the lives that continue to shape its collective identity. 

At the heart of SIPF’s programming lies the Portfolio Open Call Showcase, a cornerstone of the festival that has, across every edition, sought to surface new voices and illuminate the evolving landscape of photographic practice. Free from thematic constraint, the Open Call Portfolio Showcase is shaped entirely by the artists themselves: the works they are compelled to make, the questions they carry, and the perspectives they bring to a world in constant flux. For this milestone 10th edition, 20 portfolios from 16 countries have been selected, each one a distinct vantage point into the preoccupations and imaginative reach of contemporary image-making. Across these works, recurring currents come into view, ecology and our entangled relationship with the natural world, identity and gender explored with tenderness and courage, memory and ancestry traced through grief and inheritance, and incisive critiques of state power and belonging. The selection moves fluidly between mediums, from documentary and archival intervention to experimental processes and conceptual mixed-media, revealing photography as a language in constant renewal. These portfolios form a constellation of perspectives that reach across geographies and generations. They ask us to look closely, to feel deeply, and to consider anew. Ultimately, the images connect us both intellectually and emotionally, an invitation to see the world, and one another, with renewed clarity.

Additionally, the Photobook Showcase celebrates the photobook as a living platform for image-makers, a medium where personal, political, and cultural anecdotes find their voice through the intimate turn of a page. In a world increasingly shaped by digital content, this exhibition reaffirms the photobook’s tactile power, transcending language and culture to offer multi-layered narratives of our times. Through paper, imagery, and the rich textures of contemporary photography, viewers are invited into the quiet, unhurried art of storytelling. At its heart, the SIPF Photobook Open Call welcomes both published and dummy photobooks, honouring the finest works with the Best Published Photobook and Best Dummy Photobook Awards. Guided by this milestone edition’s theme, In My End Is My Beginning, the showcase invites you to look back in order to look forward, discovering how each printed page continues to gather new meaning with every reader who returns to look.