A Guide To February 2026 Photography Festivals & Exhibitions

Eulogy by Sander Coers at PhMuseum Lab, Exposure Photography Festival, No Place Like Home. Italian Photography Since The 1980s at Schauwerk Sindelfingen, and Meanwhile at Fotografiska Stockholm are among the photography events to visit next month.

Eulogy by Sander Coers at PhMuseum Lab

Bologna, Italy / 29 January - 19 March

In 2020, during the first waves of the pandemic, Sander Coers comes across a photograph published in the Bali Post depicting the recovery of his grandfather’s body – the son of an Indonesian woman and a Dutch soldier – whose life had been marked by silence surrounding his origins and the shadows of colonialism. This moment prompted Coers to create Eulogy, a multidisciplinary exploration of memory, migration, and personal inheritance. Delving into his family archive, the artist collected photographs, letters, and objects, placing them alongside his own visual research. Some of these images were processed using Artificial Intelligence, whose algorithms reflect cultural biases and historical visual tropes. For Coers, AI mimics memory itself, exaggerating, blurring, and reshaping elements with the dreamlike quality of recollection, while physical textures and materials remain crucial, anchoring the exhibition in tangible reality. Inspired by a trip to Indonesia, Coers focused on the way objects carry history, creating ceramic tiles onto which archival and AI-generated images are UV-printed and hand-glazed. The color palette is drawn from the original Bali Post photograph, highlighting the cultural and emotional weight of color as a carrier of the past.

This ongoing dialogue between present and past, collective and individual, analog and digital, allows us to decode the mechanisms that shape our perception of the past. Memory is thus revealed as a complex mosaic of interactions and layers which, once isolated, analyzed, and reassembled, offer us a deeper understanding of our intergenerational heritage, whether on an intimate or collective level.

Discover more on PhMuseum's website and check the special opening days as part of ART CITY Bologna 2026 and ART CITY White Night in occasion of ARTEFIERA.

Exposure Photography Festival 2026

Alberta, Canada / 5 February - 5 March

Exposure Photography Festival is a month-long celebration of photography that brings together photographers, curators, arts professionals, and audiences to explore the art of the medium through exhibitions, public art, and community engagement. The North West Showcase places a spotlight on emerging photographic talent across Alberta, BC, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Yukon, and the Northwest Territories. Lana Collins, Exposure Emerging Photographer of the Year 2025, presents All My Sisters, a love letter to sisterhood in all its forms, the chosen, the inherited, the accidental, and the fleeting. It honours the bonds that grow between friends, collaborators, strangers, and everyone who quietly participates in communal care. Additionally, the International Open Call welcomes diverse and innovative submissions from photographers and visual artists around the world who incorporate, celebrate, or challenge the photographic medium within their practice.

Featured artists also include April Neuhaus, Brandon Leung, Brody McQueen, Carey Shaw, Elisha Lozares, Jonathan Van Elslander, Kathryn Audet, Madison Chow, Melika Forouzan, Melissa Naef, Michael de Haan, and Sarah Neumann, among others.

Further information is available at Exposure's website.

No Place Like Home. Italian Photography Since The 1980s at Schauwerk Sindelfingen

Sindelfingen, Germany / 1 February - 26 July

Curated by Ralph Goertz and presented at Schauwerk Sindelfingen in collaboration with IKS Photo Düsseldorf, Kunsthalle Darmstadt, and the Draiflessen Collection Mettingen, No Place Like Home is a major retrospective that traces the evolution of Italian photography from the 1980s to today, revealing how photographers from Italy developed a distinct visual language beyond postcard clichés of “bella Italia” and “La dolce vita”. The exhibition brings together around 300 works by forty artists whose images encompass portraits, conceptual and serial projects, politically engaged photography, and landscapes.

The exhibition embraces renowned pioneers such as Luigi Ghirri, Gabriele Basilico, and Guido Guidi alongside influential figures from the 1990s and early 2000s, and highlights a younger generation of makers whose work has influenced Italian photographic expression over the past two decades. Among the exhibited artists are Giulia Agostini, Marina Ballo Charmet, Fabio Barile, Michele Borzoni, Andrea Botto, Federico Clavarino, Tomaso Clavarino, Carmen Colombo, Mario Cresci, Paola De Pietri, Davide Degano, Paola Di Bello, Alessandra Dragoni, Cesare Fabbri, Marcello Galvani, William Guerrieri, Nicola Lo Calzo, Giulia Iacolutti, Francesca Iovene, Marco Marzocchi, Sara Palmieri, Iacopo Pasqui, Piero Percoco, Alessandro Ruzzier, and others.

Discover more here.

I Still Dream Of Lost Vocabularies at Autograph

London, United Kingdom / 10 October - 21 March

Curated by Bindi Vora, I Still Dream Of Lost Vocabularies is a major group exhibition exploring how collage can deconstruct and reassemble photographic narratives to address complex histories and contested social realities. Featuring over 90 works by 13 contemporary artists, the show spans traditional photomontage, digital manipulation, and AI-generated imagery, questioning the fragility of photographic “truth” and archival memory. Shows include Sabrina Tirvengadum’s AI reconstructions of family histories shaped by indentured labor, Sunil Gupta’s queer and diasporic digital collages, and Sheida Soleimani’s layered tableaux linking political exile with ecological care. The exhibition emphasizes the transformative potential of photography to challenge dominant narratives, blending activism, experimentation, and visionary storytelling.

For more insights, go to Autograph's website.

Meanwhile at Fotografiska Stockholm

Stockholm, Sweden / 17 October - 1 March

Meanwhile showcases emerging Swedish-based artists Noah Agemo, Amanda Gylling, Andy Allen-Olivar, and Ailin Mirlashari, each redefining photography through experimental techniques and personal narratives. Agemo examines identity and memory through analogue and performative processes, Gylling blends movement, nostalgia, and magical realism, Mirlashari weaves collective memory and cultural duality into video and photographic works, and Allen-Olivar explores place and absence through intimate, fragmented storytelling. Together, the exhibition highlights bold, poetic, and forward-looking approaches that expand the boundaries of contemporary visual art.

For the full program, check out Fotografiska's website.

Another Love Story by Karla Hiraldo Voleau at La Nombreuse

Brussels, Belgium / 23 January - 22 February

Exhibited at La Nombreuse as part of PhotoBrussels Festival 2026, Another Love Story is the first solo exhibition in Belgium by French-Dominican artist Karla Hiraldo Voleau. The project reconstructs a year-long romantic relationship with a partner identified only as “X,” which takes an unexpected turn when the artist discovers through a phone call that he has been living a double life. In response, Hiraldo Voleau reenacts that relationship by reproducing more than 300 vernacular images with the help of a look-alike of “X,” placing alongside them the transcript of the life-altering call. This interplay of visuals and text examines how photography can simultaneously seduce and deceive, transforming heartbreak into an act of personal liberation and questioning the medium’s reliability as a witness to intimate experience.

Explore further at La Nombreuse's website.

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Also open this month:

FineArt Igualada 2026 / Igualada, Spain / 27 February - 24 March

FineArt Igualada is an annual international photography festival in Spain that transforms the city’s historic and industrial landmarks into ephemeral galleries. Established in 2012, the event showcases a diverse range of global talent—from renowned professionals to emerging students—across unique venues like old factories and municipal buildings. Beyond the exhibitions, the festival serves as a dynamic cultural hub by hosting workshops, guided tours, and talks designed to engage the public and foster artistic expression.

Grand Hotel Parr at The PhotoBook Museum / Cologne, Germany / 24 October - 22 February

Grand Hotel Parr at the Neues Museum Nürnberg, presented in cooperation with The PhotoBookMuseum, is the first major retrospective devoted entirely to the photobooks of British Magnum photographer Martin Parr. Unlike a traditional setup of prints on walls, the exhibition immerses visitors in a whimsical, hotel-like environment inspired by a British grand hotel, where the more than 200 photobooks Parr has published since the 1980s become both subject and medium for exploring his distinctive outlook on contemporary life. The journey begins at a reception and red-carpeted “Reading Lounge” showcasing classics such as The Last Resort (1986), Small World (1995) and Common Sense (1999), and continues through themed spaces like a billiard room, dining room, fashion boutique and an astroturf terrace, inviting visitors to stroll, browse and relax with Parr’s books in hand.

Locomotion (The Unfinished Path) by Boris Camaca at Plato / Ostrava, Czechia / 20 November - 22 March

French artist Boris Camaca presents Locomotion (The Unfinished Path), a photographic exploration of walking as both a bodily rhythm and a method of knowledge. The exhibition transforms the act of movement into an aesthetic and conceptual framework, where solitude becomes a space for introspection and transformation. Through vivid colors, staged scenes, and exaggerated visual stylization, Camaca balances sensuality and grotesque, comedy and tragedy, creating immersive images that probe identity, perception, and human experience. The work reflects on social and political narratives while inviting viewers into a visually intense, contemplative world.

Ras Al Khaimah Art 2026 Festival / Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates / 16 January - 8 February

Ras Al Khaimah Art Festival transforms the historic Al Jazeera Al Hamra Heritage Village into a stage for global artistic dialogue under the theme Civilizations – A Journey Through Time and Culture, inviting visitors to reflect on how past and present cultures intersect, evolve, and influence creative expression. Curated by Alfio Tommasini, the main exhibition explores the grand narrative of human societies from ancient trade routes to contemporary artistic practices, celebrating both tradition and innovation. Plus, for the first time, the festival incorporates the new Ras Al Khaimah Contemporary Art Biennale, curated by Sharon Toval, which presents site-specific and thematic projects across four pavilions that touch on spirituality, craft, heritage, women’s perspectives, and visionary artistic futures.

Máquina Afectiva by Carolina Pimenta at General Expenses / Mexico City, Mexico / 27 January - 27 February

Carolina Pimenta's images reveal how technology slips uninvited into the most intimate spaces, setting rhythms, shaping emotions, and defining ways of seeing that we’ve already come to accept as natural. In the city —that constant choreography of flesh and metal— the line between human and machine grows blurry, almost like an unspoken agreement. Without solemnity, yet with sharp precision, the exhibition reminds us that the technical is never neutral. It’s there, structuring daily life, dictating the tempo, pushing the pace. Máquina Afectiva invites us to pause for a moment (something almost subversive in this city) and reconsider our relationship with the things we believe we control, but that are quietly shaping us in return.