Verzasca Foto Festival 2025

The activities of the Verzasca Foto Association are not just a series of cultural events: they are human encounters that take place each year among ancient stones, larch and chestnut forests, new faces, and cherished memories.

Overview

Like a whisper rising from the valley, the Verzasca Foto Festival comes to life in the quiet that marks the first days of autumn in the mountains. The trails winding among ancient stones, along the emerald-green river, welcome deep silences and then the voices of those arriving from near and far. People do not come to the Festival just to look at photographs — they come to live an experience that weaves together landscapes and people, unexpected encounters, and reflections suspended between light and stone.

Visitors to the Festival tune into a different rhythm. The works of international artists breathe among villages, forests, and waterways, in dialogue with the mountains and with those who inhabit them. The exhibition paths become opportunities to walk through a collective gaze; one made of questions, stories, and mutual sharing. Here, every step and every image invites you to slow down, to observe, to be moved by both the visible and the invisible.

This year’s edition draws inspiration from one of the valley’s most vital and profound elements: water, both as a form and a metaphor. The exhibited projects explore its role in shaping the landscape, as well as its power as a mirror for nomadic and fluid identities: untamed, elusive, slipping through rigid definitions and imposed borders. The Festival welcomes images that flow and cannot be contained: stories of threatened territories, bodies that move upstream, visions where water becomes a voice for those who are marginalized.

In this 12th edition, the Festival remains a visual laboratory deeply invested in humanity: a place where art becomes community, where past and present are seen through new eyes, and no one is ever just a spectator.

Against the backdrop of steep rocky inclines, clusters of granite houses, and the sparse vegetation of the Vogorness Valley, a tributary river to the Verzasca river winds its way through the landscape. The river, historically a source of sustenance for the Valley, now participates in the collective imagination of Verzasca which shapes the thematic basin for the exhibition Bodies Of Water.

A natural and conceptual homage to the importance of water, Bodies Of Water flows into contemporary landscapes of climate justice, economic and political conflicts, and fluid identities. The exhibition features sixteen projects, spanning from rigorous scientific and historical research on the precarity of water, to the fluid representation of minorities and non-normative identities. In photographs submerged and developed into abstract bodies, water becomes both element and metaphor against too-strict and contained forms of predetermination. With Bodies Of Water, Verzasca Foto meanders among stones and vegetation, creating a dialogue between bodies whose meanings evade, float, rush, merge, and drift between impetus and wreckage.

Exhibited artists are Yann Gross, David Ụzochukwu, Cansu Yıldıran, Claudia Amatruda, Luis Cobelo, Emilio Nasser, Laurence Kubski, Miguel Hahn and Jan Christoph Hartung, Sara Munari, Jana Hartmann, Alice Pallot, Matthieu Gafsou, Cristobal Ascencio, Marta Panzeri, Katja Loher, and Javier Cerrada.

Additionally, each year Verzasca Foto launches an international contest where artists working in photographic and camera practices can submit new and up-and-coming work to an international jury of experts. The Verzasca Foto Awards have been a home and a stepping stone for the Nera di Verzasca Prize winners, sweetly nicknamed after the indigenous black goat, and nine finalists coming from far and wide. This year, Verzasca Foto is proud to present, for the first time, the three projects on the podium in an exhibition at the Casa Comunale in Brione, Verzasca.

The 2025 edition will feature exhibited artists Rhiannon Adam, the duo Camilla Marrese and Gabriele Chiapparini, and Aline Bovard Rudaz, who were selected through an open call. Joining them will be finalist artists Abhishek Khedekar, Ci Demi, Emilia Martin, Laurence Rasti, Marisol Mendez, Vân-Nhi Nguyễn, Yiming Zhu, and Weave A Rhyme, who are also invited to attend and present their work to the public.

The Artistic Residencies in the Verzasca Valley project offers professional photographers, both Swiss and international, the opportunity to stay in the valley for a period of research and creative development. Selected for the quality of their work, the artists are invited to engage with a new reality, freely developing a series of images inspired by the territory. Their presence becomes an opportunity for cultural exchange, enriching the dialogue between the local community and international perspectives. The resulting works portray the Verzasca Valley through diverse and contemporary lenses. In 2025, Verzasca Foto Festival presents projects by Mayssa Khoury and Sumi Anjuman, developed in collaboration with Pro Helvetia Cairo and Pro Helvetia New Delhi.

Plus, Casa Azul is an open space where art, encounters, and ideas come to life. A welcoming place to create, share, and cultivate connections, with a lively year-round agenda. It was born to inspire exchange, support local artists, imagine new forms of culture, and offer an accessible meeting point for everyone — a hub of creativity, connections, and opportunities in the region in which we live. For this edition of the Festival, Casa Azul sets the background for the exhibition of Flavio Araujo, Aniket Godbole, and Francesco Tadini in collaboration with Association +41 .

The festival not only offers a range of outdoor and indoor exhibitions, but also presentations, and encounters between artists and the local community, along with guided tours, portfolio reviews, project screenings, and live music. Among the festival events is a screening organized by PhMuseum, featuring the shortlisted projects from the PhMuseum 2025 Photography Grant and taking place during the opening night on Wednesday 3 September.