A Guide To December 2026 Photography Exhibitions

The Quiet Machine by David Claerbout at Fondazione MAST, Eyes To Fly With by Graciela Iturbide at FOMU, Planches Contact Festival, and Rubberneck by Farah Al Qasimi at François Ghebaly are among the photography events to visit next month.

The Quiet Machine by David Claerbout at Fondazione MAST

Bologna, Italy / 29 October - 7 February 2027

Curated by Francesco Zanot, this comprehensive retrospective examines the intricate relationships between industry, technology, and nature through nine film installations – including two premieres – and a dozen drawings spanning MAST's galleries and grounds. Transitioning from painting to digital media, Claerbout utilizes an advanced computational infrastructure of 3D modeling, animation, and generative AI to craft hyper-detailed, seamless visual flows where complex technology recedes into the background to prioritize meditative atmosphere over spectacle.

Central to the exhibition is Claerbout’s radical manipulation of time and duration, stretching narratives from hours to infinite real-time simulations where overt events dissolve into steady processes. Across works exploring physical labor, algorithmic computation, and organic growth, industrial frameworks and natural elements coexist under a shared principle of perpetual transformation. Counterbalanced by intimate drawings that highlight direct manual mark-making, Claerbout’s luminous, slow-moving works act as "quiet machines" that resist ephemeral image consumption to leave a lasting resonance in the viewer's memory.

Learn more on their website.

Eyes To Fly With by Graciela Iturbide at FOMU

Antwerp, Belgium / 19 September - 17 January 2027

Eyes to Fly With marks the first major Belgian retrospective dedicated to Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide, surveying over half a century of her transformative practice. Drawn from one of her celebrated self-portraits, the title reflects Iturbide's approach to photography as an emancipatory pursuit capable of revealing new perspectives on both self and society. Developed in close collaboration with the artist and curated by Sophia Greiff and Melissa Harris for the C/O Berlin Foundation, the exhibition brings together roughly 160 works, spanning her iconic black-and-white imagery, rare vintage and color prints, and contact sheets.

The retrospective deeply engages with themes of identity, ritual, spirituality, and cultural ephemerality. Key highlights include her celebrated portraits centering the autonomy and vital socioeconomic roles of indigenous Zapotec women in Oaxaca, as well as her White Fence series addressing ancestry, living conditions, and migration. From sacrificial rites in La Matanza and portrayals of the Seri people to rarely shown series from India, Bangladesh, and the long-sealed bathroom of Frida Kahlo, Iturbide’s nuanced lens dismantles conventional gender roles and captures the enduring complexities of everyday human life.

Visit the exhibition before 17 January and read more on their website.

Hometown by Hailun Ma at FOAM

Amsterdam, Netherlands / 18 September - 20 January 2027

In her first major solo exhibition outside China, Hailun Ma utilizes fashion photography as a sharp lens for social observation. Considered a leading voice among China’s new generation of image-makers, Ma focuses her camera on Xinjiang, capturing the everyday styles, gestures, and relationships of its youth, families, and multicultural communities.

Moving seamlessly between staged tableaux and spontaneous portraits, the works examine how culture is worn, lived, and continuously reimagined. By letting visual expression take precedence over direct explanation, Ma bridges local ethnic minority identities with global fashion aesthetics, offering an intimate yet internationally celebrated look into contemporary Chinese subcultures.

Learn more on their website.

Planches Contact Festival 2026

Deauville, France / 17 October - 3 January 2027

Celebrating the bicentenary of photography, the 17th edition of the Planches Contact Festival in Deauville explores the theme Generations. Spanning public spaces, beaches, and cultural venues across Normandy, the festival honors photography’s enduring power to bridge eras, preserve collective memory, and reflect societal change. Through artist residencies, awards for emerging talent, and creative experimentation, it fosters an ongoing dialogue between past traditions and contemporary visions.

This year’s programming features monumental beach exhibitions by Magnum Photos figures Bruce Gilden and Cristina de Middel, echoing the agency's historic Generation X project. Complementing the domestic showcases is an off-site residency in Tehran, which highlights photography's vital role as a vehicle for youth expression and artistic resistance. Across exhibitions, workshops, and talks, the festival reaffirms the medium's relevance as a tool for freedom, connection, and understanding in an uncertain world.

Rubberneck by Farah Al Qasimi at François Ghebaly

Beverly Hills, United States / 4 November - 12 December

Presented at François Ghebaly’s Beverly Hills gallery ahead of her upcoming solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum, Farah Al Qasimi’s Rubberneck features 15 new photographs and vinyl interventions. The exhibition captures the disjunctive nature of contemporary existence by layering markers of globalization, consumer culture, and internet aesthetics onto scenes of everyday life. Borrowing tropes from cinematic horror and science fiction, Al Qasimi channels the voyeuristic impulse of "rubbernecking" – the urge to gawk at distant catastrophes – juxtaposing mundane interior domesticity with intimations of disaster.

Across locations ranging from the UAE to West Texas and Michigan, the works cast outsiders, children, and animals as clairvoyants sensing unseen disruption. Whether depicting a child peering through a snow globe or a horse treading uneasy pool waters, Al Qasimi infuses innocuous moments with an ambient sense of foreboding.

Check the displayed artworks on the gallery's website.

The Heart Of The Matter by Carrie Mae Weems at C/O Berlin

Berlin, Germany / 12 September - 3 February 2027

Spanning over four decades of groundbreaking practice, Carrie Mae Weems’s extensive exhibition investigates how power, race, and gender shape historical memory and visual representation. Featuring more than a hundred photographs, videos, and installations, the survey tracks Weems's evolution from intimate explorations of domesticity and kinship to wider critiques of public monuments, museums, and historical sites. Blending documentary, conceptual, and staged strategies, her poetic and political visual language consistently questions who is granted visibility in historical narratives.

The exhibition also highlights key recent works that bridge personal biography with systemic struggles and collective resilience. Central to the presentation are Preach, a series examining the role of Black faith communities as sanctuaries of solidarity and resistance, and the Pepper’s ghost video installation Leave Now!, which recounts her grandfather's perilous experience as a tenant farmer in the American South. The comprehensive retrospective underscores Weems’s enduring impact as a storyteller challenging viewers to reconsider their understandings of identity and belonging.

You can visit the exhibition until 3 February. More info on C/O Berlin's website.

Ici grand ouvert by SMITH at MAC VAL

Paris, France / 23 May - 31 January 2027

Artist-researcher SMITH explores the fluid thresholds of identity, embodiment, and reality through an expansive practice bridging photography, moving images, sculpture, installation, and performance. Foregoing chronological constraints, his work dissolves conventional boundaries between portraiture and landscape to intertwine human, animal, mineral, and cosmic elements.

Guided by a poetics of metamorphosis, fluctuating consciousness, and experimental technologies, SMITH connects scientific tools with spiritual and bodily inquiries, capturing states where forms mutate and perception is radically reframed. Ici grand ouvert brings together past and present works alongside forward-looking explorations, developed in collaboration with architects Matthieu Prat, Sami Rintala, and Toni Lozano.

On Rape And Institutional Failure by Laia Abril at ICP

New York, United States / 15 October - 11 January 2027

Centered on the second chapter of her long-term project A History of Misogyny, Laia Abril’s exhibition investigates the historical and enduring realities of violence against women. Through a multidisciplinary mix of archival materials, testimonies, photographs, everyday objects, and audiovisual installations, she traces how pervasive prejudices and gender stereotypes sustain systemic rape culture worldwide.

By directing her critical lens toward legal and social institutions rather than individual victims, Abril circumvents victim-blaming and confronts the lack of societal accountability that shields perpetrators. First shown in 2020 amid the momentum of the #MeToo movement, the work interrogates the ongoing failure to achieve meaningful systemic justice, offering a space to confront transgenerational trauma and the systemic silencing of victims across generations.

Visit ICP's website for more information.

A Home With No Roof by Sara De Brito Faustino at Foto Forum

Bolzano, Italy / 17 November - 18 January 2027

In A Home With No Roof, Sara De Brito Faustino investigates domestic dysfunction, alienation, and trauma through meticulous downscaled models of her childhood apartment. Transforming everyday domestic remnants into unsettling miniature scenes, she confronts memories of a home that never offered comfort or belonging. Disquieting details infuse the familiar with the grotesque. Through calculated shifts in scale and texture, the home morphs into a monstrous, claustrophobic presence where the artist appears petrified, embodying psychological dissociation while seeking catharsis from a safe distance.

Transcending conventional photography, the work weaves together staging, physical construction, and performance through a deliberately fragile, highly polished yet raw aesthetic. In its presentation, Faustino extends this visual tension into the physical gallery via immersive scenographic interventions. By manipulating architectural scale and blurring the lines between images and three-dimensional space, the exhibition disorients visitors' bodily perceptions, questioning the boundaries between private memory and public display while leaving the traces of domestic narrative etched into the architecture.

Find out more on the gallery's website.

Metamorphosis at Capa Center

Budapest, Hungary / 7 October - 11 January 2027

Curated by Emese Mucsi with the support of FUTURES, this traveling exhibition concludes its tour at the Capa Center in Budapest after stops in Prague, Rouen, and Turin. Grounded in philosopher Emanuele Coccia’s Metamorphoses and echoing Ovid’s classical tradition, the show reconsiders life as an indivisible, continuously transforming continuum rather than a set of fixed categories. By dismantling the boundaries between nature, culture, and technology, the exhibition positions contemporary photography not merely as a retrospective document, but as an active, myth-making instrument that interprets crisis and participates directly in shaping humanity's evolving worldview.

Across diverse mediums, nine emerging European artists investigate continuous transformation across three core domains: the microscopic realm of molecular biology and cellular ecosystems, the shifting dynamics of interpersonal and familial relationships, and expansive environmental processes that stretch to the cosmic scale. By engaging with these layered transitions, the artists act as witnesses to an era of profound scientific and cultural upheaval, offering viewers a shared space to reflect on change and reimagine our interconnected place within the world.

More information on the Capa Center's website.