A Guide To December 2023 and January 2024 Photography Festivals

PhotoNOLA, Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival, PhotoBrussels and Photo Phnom Penh are among the highlighted photo events opening in the coming weeks.

PhotoNOLA 2023

New Orleans, United States / 13 December - 17 December

Produced by the New Orleans Photo Alliance in partnership with museums, galleries, and alternative venues citywide, PhotoNOLA holds a condensed line up of portfolio reviews, talks, seminars and workshops all in proximity to the PhotoBOOK Fair, along with a rich program of exhibitions (many are open during the whole month of December) with authors such as Lila Barth, Orejarena Stein, Debbie Fleming Caffery, Daniella Zalcman, Rene Broussard and Michael Young. Reviewers include experts like Jacob Moscovitch (The New York Times), Geoffrey Koslov (Foto Relevance), Brian Piper (New Orleans Museum of Art), Maria L. Kelly (High Museum of Art), Michelle Schulte (LSU Museum of Art). Another highlight is Still/Motion: The Festival of Photography in Film, which celebrates photography’s intersection with cinema. This year’s program includes films featuring photographic works of Sebastião Salgado, Robert Capa, Gerda Taro, David “Chim” Seymour, Joel-Peter Witkin and Ben Depp.

Discover more on their website.

Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival 2023

Xiamen, China / 15 December - 21 January

The collaboration between Three Shadows Photography Art Centre in Xiamen, China, and the French photography festival Les Rencontres d’Arles evolved into the 9th edition. This year, the annual Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival presents 31 exhibitions, featuring works by over a hundred artists from France, Germany, the United States, Italy, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. During the opening week, a series of engaging activities takes place, including the opening ceremony, portfolio reviews, lectures, workshops, artist-guided tours, performances, symposiums, a photobook market, and educational tours. In addition, the Jimei x Arles Discovery Award and Curatorial Award for Photography and Moving Image will be announced, together with the new established Dummy Book Award. Centered around the main venue, the new project Isles Project radiates and collaborates with diverse cultural, artistic, and living spaces, inviting the audience to embark on an urban art stroll.

Explore the full program on their website.

PhotoBrussels 2024

Brussels, Belgium / 25 January - 25 February

Created in 2016 at the initiative of Hangar, with a coordinating committee — composed of: Atelier Contraste, Box Galerie, Contretype, L’Enfant Sauvage, Fondation A Stichting, Hangar, La Nombreuse, Stieglitz19 and Tipi Bookshop — established to manage the organization of the festival, PhotoBrussels Festival is an event that establishes the Belgian capital as part of the European Month of Photography (EMOP). For its 8th edition, the program includes several solo and collective shows, with artists including René Bertrand, Emma Hardy, Vincen Beeckman, Joëlle Van Autreve, Daria Svertilova. The Centre Culturel Espace Magh, 254 Forest, Archiraar Gallery, Centre Tour à Plomb, Galerie Emilie Dujat, V/MSP Gallery, Galerie Gomis are among the participating venues across the city.

Read the full exhibitions program on the PhotoBrussels' website.

Photo Phnom Penh Festival 2023

Phnom Penh, Cambodia / 7 December - 7 February

Founded and directed by Christian Caujolle and Alain Arnaudet, and organized by Photo Phnom Penh Association - an independent Cambodian NGO - the festival reached its 15th edition this year. The rich program includes round tables, screenings evenings, portfolio reviews, outdoor and indoor exhibitions in different venues such as IFC gallery, Bophana center, Sra'Art Gallery and Phnom Penh Airports. Not to be missed is the famous traveling exhibition on tuk-tuks as well as a tuk-tuk tour which will take visitors to exhibitions around the city. Kanha Hul, Chen Chun-Lu, Alan Crumlish, Nhean Lyda and Chhen Kimhong are among the artists exhibited.

Find out more on their website.

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Other festivals still open:

Fotograf Festival 2023 / Prague, Czech Republic / 21 September - 11 February

The 13th edition of the Fotograf Festival, named Hypertension23 and curated by Monika Čejková, deals with the tension caused by technologies that expose our attention to the constant visual pressure to notice something, experience it emotionally, and react. The theme is also treated in an exhibition at the Fotograf Gallery by curator Tina Poliačková. Furthermore, the festival is extended to the public space, where a visual essay by Shumon Basar, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Douglas Coupland is presented in an underpass of a metro line and on the facade of the Trade Fair Palace. A series of discussions, artist talks, site-specific events, projections, and guided tours accompany the main exhibition program from September to February.

Photaumnales 2023 / Hauts-de-France, France / 16 September - 31 December

Celebrating its 20th edition, the festival is focusing its exhibition programme under the theme Hors Jeux, displaying photographers who deal with the subject of sports through offbeat approaches, exploring a wide range of themes such as events, sociology of practices, sporting landscapes, and exaltation of the body. The 40 exhibitions of this year's event are part of the Cultural Olympiad in the Hauts-de-France region. Guest of the 2023 edition include Guillaume Martial, Théo Saffroy, Sarah Makharine, Denis Darzacq, Luisa Dörr, René-Jacques, Céline Villegas, Sabi Singh, Brice Krummenacker, Erik Kessels, Lavinia Parlamenti & Manfredi Pantanella, Ken Grant, Charles Thiefaine, Studio Kima, Thomas Sauvin and more.

Internationales Festival Fotografischer Bilder 2023 / Regensburg, Germany / 23 November - 4 February

Questioning the ubiquity of photographic images, the festival offers a screening session dedicated to photography and cinema, lectures, a three-day symposium and exhibitions, with Darktaxa project: the Regensburg Constellation as main show. The name darktaxa is borrowed from taxonomy, referring to animals that exist but do not yet have a name or have not been assigned to a species. In the show, the audience has the opportunity to see artists responding to the theme by experimenting with digital photography, CGI, motion capture, 2D/3D/4D softwares, 3D scanning, AI, deep learning, GANs, photogrammetry, 3D printing, and augmented reality. The programme also includes the award ceremony for the German Photo Book Prize, several partner exhibitions, and two special events about media literacy/media education, and about photography and depression.

Photo Marseille / Marseille, France / 12 October - 24 December

Photojournalism is taking over the French city with a rich programme of events in the 13th edition of the festival, showcasing the work of more than 100 photographers throughout 22 venues. Individual and collective exhibitions, including the one showcasing the results of the Prix Maison Blanche, as well as projections, talks, and masterclasses. This edition also includes an outdoor collective exhibition dedicated to the theme of migrations, bringing together ten different projects. Plus, multidisciplinary artist Anita Pouchard Serra presents a report exploring the complexity of transnational identities, starting from her own multicultural family history between France and Algeria.

Thessaloniki Photobiennale 2023 / Thessaloniki, Greece / 10 October - 11 February

Organised by MOMus and curated by the MOMus-Thessaloniki Museum of Photography, the festival presents more than 100 photographers and artists from 18 countries in a multi-thematic programme of 25 exhibitions, open public events, and educational activities hosted in 19 museums, cultural venues, and art venues in Thessaloniki and Athens. This year, the main exhibition The Spectre of the People is curated by the art historian, photographer, and curator Julian Stallabrass and explores populism through photography and video. The programme also includes group and individual shows and a selection of the Greek photobook scene in the last twenty years, in addition to parallel events, educational activities, and guided tours.

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Check out our festivals page to get a complete view of what's coming up on the photography calendar over the next few months.