A Guide to August 2025 Photography Festivals & Exhibitions

PhEST, Kranj Foto Fest, FOTO Bali Festival, Elegy To The Void by Pacifico Silano at Ace Hotel New York, Ragusa Foto Festival, Panjereh by Sheida Soleimani at ICP, and Fotografia Calabria Festival are among the photography events to visit next month.

PhEST 2025

Monopoli, Italy / 8 August - 16 November

This year marks the 10th anniversary of PhEST, and to celebrate a decade of creativity, the festival launches earlier than ever, running from 8 August to 16 November 2025 in the coastal town of Monopoli, in Puglia, Italy. More than just an art event, PhEST is an immersive journey through photography, cinema, music, and Mediterranean culture, turning the town into an open-air stage for contemporary visual storytelling. With its eyes set firmly on the shifting identities of the Mediterranean, the Balkans, the Middle East, and Africa, this year's edition promises to deepen the dialogue between reality and its many representations. Under the artistic direction of Giovanni Troilo and curatorship of Arianna Rinaldo, PhEST 2025 reaffirms its mission to explore the evolving landscape of image-making and meaning.

More info about the exhibited artists and the festival program will be available soon on their website.

Kranj Foto Fest 2025

Kranj, Slovenia / 27 August - 27 September

Kranj Foto Fest transforms the historic Slovenian town of Kranj into a dynamic hub for contemporary photography. Founded in 2021, the festival is quickly becoming a key cultural event in Central Europe, blending Kranj’s rich photographic legacy—home of Janez Puhar, the 19th-century pioneer of photography on glass—with a forward-thinking vision. This year’s edition continues the festival’s mission to spark dialogue between artists, curators, and the public through carefully curated exhibitions woven into the fabric of the city itself. With a strong emphasis on community integration, environmental sustainability, and site-specific installations, the festival invites visitors to experience photography not just in galleries but throughout the medieval streets and public spaces of the city. Among the festival events are guided tours, workshops, and a screening featuring the shortlisted projects from the PhMuseum 2025 Photography Grant.

Discover the complete list of exhibited artists and events on their website.

FOTO Bali Festival 2025

Bali, Indonesia / 26 July - 17 August

Directed by Kelsang Dolma and curated by Ng Swan Ti and Gatari Surya Kusuma, FOTO Bali Festival is a significant new addition to Southeast Asia’s cultural calendar. The festival invites lens-based practitioners to take part in a growing regional and international conversation around photography as a tool for art, memory, and social reflection. Set against the richly layered cultural landscape of Bali, the event offers a curated platform for curatorial dialogue and community connection. Through exhibitions, workshops, discussions, photo books, and multimedia, it invites audiences to reflect on personal stories and shifting global relationships. Kim Hak, Rony Zakaria, Karolina Gembara, Shwe Wutt Hmon, Sophal Neak, Zishaan A Latif, and Vickram Sombu are among the exhibited artists.

Find out more on their website.

Elegy To The Void by Pacifico Silano at Ace Hotel New York

New York, United States / 26 June - 23 August

The Ace Artist in Residence program saw Pacifico Silano taking up residence in May to transform one of Ace Hotel’s rooms into his own studio. Rephotographing sections of gay pornographic magazines of the 1970s and 80s, Silano explores print culture, image circulation, and questions of LGBTQ identity. His work is entirely composed of repurposed fragments and his month-long residency culminates in an installation that captures the tensions between intimacy and desire, nostalgia and loss—evoking the complex emotional terrain of queer history shaped by liberation and the advent of the devastating HIV/AIDS crisis. This year's cycle continues Ace Hotel’s commitment to offering artists an unconventional and immersive space to create, reflect, and connect with the public, blurring the boundaries between hospitality and contemporary art.

The exhibition runs until 23 August. Learn more on their website.

Ragusa Foto Festival 2025

Ragusa, Italy / 28 August - 28 September

The 13th edition of Ragusa Foto Festival returns under the theme Beyond Appearance. Running in the historic Sicilian town of Ragusa, the new edition delves into the spiritual and emotional dimensions of contemporary life, inviting audiences to reflect on identity, introspection, and the human condition in an age dominated by technology, superficiality, and global uncertainty. The wide program offers a mix of exhibitions, talks, workshops, portfolio reviews and events, featuring a diverse lineup of photographers whose work explores the inner self beyond cultural, social, or economic boundaries. Among the exhibited artists are Maud Rallière, Jessica Backhaus, Alessia Rollo, Maria Lax, Cristina Vatielli, Charles Freger, and Johannes Seyerlein.

Learn more on their website.

Panjereh by Sheida Soleimani at ICP

New York, United States / 19 June - 28 September

In her exhibition Panjereh, artist Sheida Soleimani expands on her Ghostwriter series, which uses surreal, layered photographic compositions to explore her parents' political exile from Iran as a lens for broader geopolitical issues. The show debuts a new body of work featuring injured birds, drawing from her experience as a wildlife rehabilitator to create a powerful metaphor for the struggles of migrants and refugees. Soleimani's art uniquely combines her family's history, intricate studio setups, and a practice of care to examine how memory and storytelling transmit difficult histories of political resistance and displacement.

Fotografia Calabria Festival 2025

San Lucido, Italy / 1 August - 12 October

Fotografia Calabria Festival unfolds this summer under the theme Shared Roots: Places, inviting audiences to reflect on the deep ties between identity and the spaces we inhabit, both real and imagined. Taking place across various locations in Calabria, the 2025 edition explores how places, in their constant transformation, mirror our personal and collective histories. From forgotten buildings to dreamlike landscapes, the festival presents a rich visual tapestry that questions how we relate to geography, memory, and cultural perception. Exhibiting artists include Maja Nydal Eriksen, Alessandro Toscano, Hashem Shakeri, Marie Tomanova, Claudia Fuggetti, Alessandro Mallamaci, Lys Arango, Ciro Battiloro, Paul Gambin, Jung Ui Lee, Kazuaki Koseki, Chiara Negrello, Sofia Pagliaro e Gaia Tognoni, Melissa Peritore, Mykahilo Palinchak, and Archivio Luce.

Check the festival program on their website.

Roots Of The Earth by Akshay Mahajan and Prabhakar Kamble at Jhaveri Contemporary

Mumbai, India / 10 July - 16 August

In Roots Of The Earth, artists Prabhakar Kamble and Akshay Mahajan establish a dialogue between sculpture and collage. Kamble’s practice is grounded in materiality, using clay and rope to create tactile forms that speak of land and labour. In contrast, Akshay Mahajan’s mixed-media works layer archival photos and folk motifs, exploring the fluidity of memory and cultural history along the Brahmaputra river. The exhibition juxtaposes the tangible weight of Kamble’s forms with the layered drift of Mahajan’s narratives. Together, they propose that identity is not fixed but provisional—a form of river-born clay, constantly in motion yet always connected to its origins.

Find out more on their website.

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Also open this month:

Reflecting The Real at Photo Museum Ireland / Dublin, Ireland / 5 July - 24 August

The show presents a striking exploration of truth, identity, and authenticity in today's visually chaotic world. As the debut exhibition of the museum’s International Open Awards, Reflecting The Real showcases the works of award recipients Deb Choudhuri, Ciarán Dunbar, Emilia Martin, Dimitri Stefanov, and Laure d'Utruy. Through diverse visual languages and thoughtful critique, it challenges visitors to reconsider what "real" means in a time of misinformation and digital distortion. Complementing the main show is a curated projection installation featuring works by 15 shortlisted artists, adding further depth to this urgent and timely conversation on representation and the human experience.

ANIMATI. God, Human, Animal, Machine at MUFOCO / Milan, Italy / 18 May - 31 August

For the first time in Italy, the photographic archive of a public museum is being analyzed through computer vision. A dialogue between art and artificial intelligence takes shape at the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Curated by Chiara Bardelli Nonino, ANIMATI. God, Human, Animal, Machine is much more than an exhibition: it is an open workshop on the meaning of images in the algorithmic age, an invitation to reconsider photography not only as a document or art, but as a mirror of our deepest questions.

Nothing Is Original by Julian Rosefeldt at C/O Berlin / Berlin, Germany / 24 May - 16 September

C/O Berlin presents Nothing Is Original, a landmark retrospective dedicated to acclaimed artist and filmmaker Julian Rosefeldt, marking the first time his work from the past thirty years is brought together in a single exhibition. Known for his visually rich, multi-channel film installations that blur the line between fiction and documentary, Rosefeldt masterfully deconstructs film genres, media narratives, and cultural ideologies. The exhibition offers rare insight into his creative process through unpublished storyboards, sketches, set photographs, and behind-the-scenes material, revealing how cinematic tropes are dismantled and reimagined.