A Guide to February 2025 Photography Festivals & Exhibitions

Matthieu Croizier at PhMuseum Lab, Exposure Photography Festival, Emma Sarpaniemi at NEVVEN, Mika Sperling at Foto Forum, and Ras Al Khaimah Art 2025 are among the photography events to visit next month.

That Moment When You Can See The Crack In The World by Matthieu Croizier at PhMuseum Lab

Bologna, Italy / 5 February - 3 April

Matthieu Croizier's work explores the fluid nature of identity, challenging traditional beauty standards. The Swiss artist embraces the different, the new and grotesque, creating dreamlike scenes in which bodies are transformed. The images portray an act of metamorphosis. Reality becomes malleable, things are not condemned to be as they were defined. It is a love letter to the abnormal, where bodies are set free from what they are supposed to look like. Croizier tilts and shifts paradigms to shape a world in which the words “beauty” and “ugliness” cease to mean much. Monstrosity is claimed as tender and spectacular, queerness is a magical and constant act of mutation. If the photographs we are used to seeing represent what we are able to imagine, That Moment When You Can See The Crack In The World expands the coordinates of what we feel is possible. Reality has opened up, free and in flux.

As part of Art City Bologna 2025 and Art City White Night during ArteFiera, the exhibition will have special opening days: 6-7 February from 5pm to 7 pm, 8 February from 6pm to midnight, 9 February from 4pm to 6pm.

Learn more on PhMuseum Lab's website.

Exposure Photography Festival 2025

Alberta, Canada / 6 February - 6 March

The annual Exposure Photography Festival presents exhibitions showcasing works by internationally renowned practitioners and emerging and established talent from Alberta. The festival provides a wide program that includes exhibitions, events, public art, community engagement, and learning opportunities, offering dynamic programming to Calgary’s arts-engaged audiences while reaching out to and nurturing new audiences for photography. Among the exhibited artists are Anton Bou, Madeleine Brunnmeier, Diana Cheren Nygren, Hyojae Chung, Andy Mattern, Louie Morales, Eliot Nasrallah, Adetona Omokanye, Alina Saranti, Martha Tadesse, George Webber, Kelly Tsai, Saeed Abdollah, Tiffany Thomson, Masoud Alipourian, Rosemary Burd, Mitra Samavaki, and more.

Explore the full program on their website.

Two Ways To Carry A Cauliflower by Emma Sarpaniemi at NEVVEN

Gothenburg, Sweden / 30 January - 9 March

A collaboration between PhMuseum Days 2024 and NEVVEN, Two Ways To Carry A Cauliflower is the first gallery solo show in Sweden by Finnish artist Emma Sarpaniemi.

Photographic self-portrait is probably going to be the form of expression for which this entire period in the history of mankind will be remembered, Emma Sarpaniemi took this overused medium and managed to reinvent it anew. This operation although was not aimed at refreshing and making more interesting an age-old process, but instead to subvert and impose a new dynamic to it, where the objectified and (male-)gazed upon becomes the one in power, where the erotic and tender becomes freed from our patriarchal societal judgment and the over-zealous seriousness of the art world can be turned into play. It is with this unique capacity that Sarpaniemi looks back at us from all of her pictures: there she is colourful, witty, funny, but mostly empowered, in control of her body and her narrative, and setting new rules and terms of what is permitted and what is to be judged, her own rules.

Discover more on NEVVEN's website.

Under The Sun by Sam Youkilis at C/O Berlin

Berlin, Germany / 1 February - 7 May

As a pioneer of a new form of visual storytelling, Youkilis works with the iPhone and uses the social network Instagram as a platform to share his observations, compiled into thematic clusters, with numerous followers. From seemingly banal scenes, he creates a visual archive at the intersection of street, travel, food, and documentary photography that serves both the familiar tropes and clichés of travel and references universal themes of human experience. Sam Youkilis’s work also highlights the uses and impact of photography in contemporary mass media and in our fast-moving visual culture: How do smartphone and social networks change our interaction with photography? How do we use images to form our identities, share our experiences, and create meaning?

Find out more on C/O Berlin's website.

States Of Rebirth: Body Images In Motion at PHOXXI - Temporary House Of Photography

Hamburg, Germany / 21 February - 17 August

Curated by Nadine Isabelle Henrich, the exhibition examines the correlation between the body, movement, and societal structures in physical and digital spaces, through a focus on documentary and conceptual projects in contemporary performance, portrait and dance-photograpraphy. As a choreography – of photographs concerning of the relationship between bodies in motion – States Of Rebirth explores how our attitudes, gestures and affectations at once reflect, configure and transform how we negotiate societal change. Exhibited artists are Khing Wai Bei, Felipe Romero Beltrán, Moshtari Hilal, Naomi Lulendo, Ana Maria Sales Prado, Roxana Rios, Aykan Safoğlu, Isaac Chong Wai, and Farren van Wyk.

Find out more on their website.

FineArt Igualada 2025

Igualada, Spain / 21 February - 16 March

FineArt’s main objective is to bring photography closer to all audiences, to energize the premises where the exhibitions take place, and to open Igualada as a photographic and design city. The exhibition spaces include schools, the municipal market, municipal and/or cultural facilities, old factories and premises that are currently unoccupied, promoting design and local industrial architecture. Along with the photographic exhibition, cultural activities like talks, round tables, guided tours, and workshops for adults and children are organized.

Learn more on their website.

Ras Al Khaimah Art 2025

Al Jazirah Al Hamra, United Arab Emirates / 31 January - 28 February

Around 200 local and global artists have been invited to participate in the Ras Al Khaimah Art 2025 Festival to explore this edition's theme Memory, investigating the depths of their innermost thoughts and emotions. They have responded by embarking on personal journeys of introspection and discovery to create a shared communal space for catharsis, healing and connection for this year’s festival. The rich program of activities includes workshops, performances and films, tours, culinary experiences, talks and more. Plus, the Cultural Weekend will celebrate Emirati cultural traditions, artisans and artists. The festival will also host night screenings of Japanese films in collaboration with the Consulate General of Japan.

Discover the full program on their website.

I Have Done Nothing Wrong by Mika Sperling at Foto Forum

Bolzano, Italy / 14 January - 22 February

Mika Sperling's exhibition confronts the complex emotions of sexual abuse through archival images, drawings, photographs, and a theatrical play. Sperling's work challenges the silence surrounding abuse as she explores her own experiences with her late grandfather. The exhibition delves into themes of memory, erasure, and familial complicity, creating a space for healing and accountability. I Have Done Nothing Wrong becomes a love letter to herself and to the decades of silence endure.

Space - A Visual Journey at Fotografiska Stockholm

Stockholm, Sweden / 18 October - 2 March

Throughout history, humans have looked up to the stars and tried to understand what is out there. Space represents how we can expand the outer limits for what is possible, our drive to discover something new, and stepping into the unknown. All the while raising the eternal questions of who we are and where in this vastness we belong. In this exhibition expression meets scientific discoveries with 13 photographers who all explore space from their own perspectives. Participating photographers are Rhiannon Adam, Mackenzie Calle, Mónica Alcázar-Duarte, Vincent Fournier, Brooke Holm, Darya Kawa, Michael Najjar, Mikael Owunna, Matjaž Tančič, Gilleam Trapenberg, Thomas Vanz, Ming Wong, Cecilia Ömalm and Göran Östlin.

Find out more on their website.