A Guide to January 2025 Photography Festivals & Exhibitions

Focus Festival, Intimacies Of The Everyday at National Gallery of Iceland, Dar Foto Festival, My Sister, My Self by Colleen and Kathleen Kenyon at CPW are among the photography events to visit next month.

Focus Festival 2025

Faro de José Ignacio, Uruguay / 6 January - 15 January

Directed by Nicolás Janowski, the edition of the festival explores the concept of Playtime, inviting visitors and artists to participate in an inexhaustible game where each image opens us to a new world, and each look is a story to discove. Produced by FOLA and Arte x Arte, with the support of Silver Cloud - Mirabaud, the event is free and open to the public with the official inauguration taking place at the traditional Galería de las Misiones. Among exhibitions and activities, the Museo Itinerante will surprise with a project of contemporary Colombian photography curated by Laura Sofía Mejía including works by Natalia Ortiz Mantilla, Georgina Montoya, Ana María Lagos and Ana Vallejo. Additionally, the José Ignacio Lighthouse will join the festival with an installation by Fernando Montiel Klint (Mexico).

Discover more on the festival's website.

Intimacies Of The Everyday at National Gallery of Iceland

Reykjavík, Iceland / 25 January - 4 May

Curated by Pari Stave, the group exhibition is organized around the unifying idea that certain images can only be achieved by close, attentive, and sustained observation. Featuring more than 60 photographs by artists such as Agnieszka Sosnowska, Joakim Eskildsen, Niall McDiarmid, Orri Jónsson, and Sally Mann, the works in the exhibition speak eloquently to the photographers’ intimate familiarity with their subjects and thus the intrinsic tenderness in their approach. In turn, the photographs also reveal the sitters’ willing participation in the artistic process, an implied trust and understanding that at times functions as creative collaboration.

The exhibition's opening also coincides with the biennial Icelandic Photography Festival (TIPF), an international festival co-directed by Katrín Elvarsdóttir and Pétur Thomsen, which will be held January 18-26, 2025. The festival program includes lectures, guided tours, photo book presentations, and portfolio reviews hosted by the Reykjavik Museum of Photography.

Find out more on the National Gallery of Iceland's website.

Dar Foto Festival 2025

Dar es Salaam and Stone Town, Tanzania / 31 January - 1 March

Co-founded by Andrew Stephen Munuwa and Valentin Rudloff, the new edition is dedicated to the theme of Coexistence and aims to establish a dialogue on the meanings of peaceful coexistence in Tanzania and beyond. By drawing on indigenous and contemporary models of community, the festival encourages introspection and embraces dialogue. The program includes activities such as several exhibitions with established and emerging Tanzanian photographers across Dar es Salaam and Stone Town, portfolio reviews, photo walks to learn about street and documentary photography and connect with other photographers, and a series of conversations with professionals.

Discover the full program on the festival's website.

My Sister, My Self by Colleen Kenyon and Kathleen Kenyon at CPW

New York, United States / 18 January - 4 May

The opening of CPW - Center for Photography at Woodstock's newly renovated building, held on January 18, 2025, will come with a party and the unveiling of four new exhibitions. Among them, My Sister, My Self is a retrospective exhibition of twin sisters Colleen and Kathleen Kenyon, who were part of the 70s and ’80s movement of female artists challenging the photographic establishment. The exhibition features their hand-colored portraits in domestic settings and ironic photomontages using gender-specific media imagery. The two sisters also served as directors of the Center for Photography at Woodstock, where they continued to advocate for the advancement of women in the arts and for artists of color. Curated by art historians Tom Wolf and Laurie Dahlberg, the exhibition materials are drawn from the archives of their works now held by CPW.

More info on their website.

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Also open this month:

The Helsinki School—Out Of The Depths Of Photography at Persons Projects /
Berlin, Germany / 15 November - 25 January

Bringing together works by artists Milja Laurila, Anni Leppälä, Niko Luoma, Jussi Nahkuri, Jyrki Parantainen, and Niina Vatanen, the exhibition represents a collective effort to redefine the material qualities of the photograph, attempting to recover its magic as a physical object. Visitors can explore into how different materials—such as fabrics, layered collages, and folded film negatives transformed into sculptures—can be utilized to form a new visual language within the photographic process today.

Photo Brussels 2025 / Brussels, Belgium / 23 January - 23 February

Showcasing the work of Belgian and international photographers, the festival offers a multicultural perspective over photography. Exhibitions, workshops, conferences, and guided tours take place throughout the program. Pia Paulina Guilmoth, Pascal Sgro, Chloé Azzopardi, Pauline Vanden Neste and Tom Lyon, Valérie Lenders, Francesco Del Conte, Hélène Petite and Yuna Mathieu-Chovet are among the exhibited artists.

From Yangon To Peshawar — Fraglich Publishing by Lukas Birk at The PhotoBook Museum /
Cologne, Germany / 7 December - 28 February

Since 2017, Lukas Birk has been publishing books and organizing exhibitions with Fraglich that focus on Indigenous historical and contemporary photographic and visual traditions, giving insights into the cultural and social functions of photography in countries such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Myanmar and India. With his meticulous research, commitment to the preservation of photographic treasures and innovative journalistic approach, he is making an important contribution to honoring and preserving the photographic and cultural heritage of these often-forgotten countries and their visual treasures. In January, Birk will be in Cologne for an artist talk and an Afghan Camera Box photo session.