A Guide to October 2024 Photography Festivals & Exhibitions

Encontros da Imagem, Organ Vida, Incadaqués Photo Festival, Science/Fiction — A Non-History of Plants at MEP, Festival Panoràmic and How Like A Leaf I Am by Alexandra Baumgartner at Photoforum Pasquart are among the photography events to visit next month.

Encontros da Imagem 2024

Braga, Portugal / 20 September - 3 November

Opening on 20th September, Encontros da Imagem - International Photography and Visual Arts Festival returned with more than 40 exhibitions by photographers and visual artists from all over the world, in Braga, Porto, Guimarães, Barcelos and Avintes. In the year that marks the 50th anniversary of the fall of the Portuguese dictatorship, part of the festival's exhibition program proposes a reflection on history and questions what colonialism is today, promoting the debate around post-colonialism and decolonial thinking. Analyzing how it still manifests itself across society and what new forms it takes in the contemporary world is the motto for this new edition.

Among the exhibited artists are Omar Victor Diop, Ofir Berman, D. M. Terblanche, Augusto Brázio, Amilton Neves, Marja Helander, Ayrton Heráclito, Varvara Uhlik, Marques Valentim, Margot Wallard and Sofia Yala. Of the more than 40 exhibitions scheduled, more than half pass through various points on Braga's cultural circuit, such as Theatro Circo, Museu Nogueira da Silva, Mosteiro de Tibães, gnration or Galeria do Paço. In addition, other venues in the northern region are part of the festival, including Mira Forum, Leica Gallery (Porto), Universidade do Minho CAAA (Guimarães), Theatro Gil Vicente (Barcelos) and Casa da Cultura (Avintes).

You can visit the festival until the 3rd of November. Discover the full program on Encontros da Imagem's website.

Organ Vida 2024

Zagreb, Croatia / 26 September - 3 November

This year, Organ Vida is all about odd disobediences. Micro-rebellions, gut reactions, instincts, intense yearnings and bizarre obsessions — the weirdly visceral. The opening night will be marked by 2 performances of the festival finalists – the interdisciplinary artist Teo Ala-Ruona will present frenetic and emotionally charged Anabolic Spectacle, while the artists Annemarija Gulbe, Anna Ansone, Krišjānis Elviks will perform plafull and self-ironical THIRST.

The festival program includes solo shows by artists Ivan Buvinič, Zoe Williams. In addition the group show Creeps and Butterflies will exhibit photographers such as Teo Ala-Ruona, Hugo Laporte, Clémence Elman, Julie Folly, Valerie Geissbühler, Annemarija Gulbe u suradnji s Annom Ansone i Krišjānis Elviksom, Zhao Qian, Stacy Kranitz, Marianna Nardini, Mila Soporowska. Plus, the group exhibition Ties That Bind features FUTURES artists Dev Dhunsi, Sasha Chaika, Jan Durina, Ihar Hancharuk, Donja Nasseri, Angyvir Padilla and Sheung Yiu.

Find out more on their website.

Incadaqués Photo Festival 2024

Cadaqués, Spain / 3 October - 13 October

With the opening weekend taking place from 3th to 6th of October 2024, the festival program offers a wide program of exhibitions, vernissages, party and lunch, events, projections and much more. Eloïse Labarbe Lafon, Alvin NG, Anika Spereiter, Arthur Perset, Edoardo De Ruggiero, Emilia Martin, Eva Gjaltema, Isabel Miquel Arques, Ludovica Limido, Marco Rapaccini, Paolo Manzo, Rona Bar & Ofek Avshalom, Sissel Annett, Tanara Stuermer, Tomoko Nagakawa are among the exhibited artists.

Find our more on InCadaqués Photo Festival's website.

Science/Fiction — A Non-History of Plants at MEP

Paris, France / 16 October - 19 January 2025

Bringing together over 40 artists from different periods and nationalities, this exhibition juxtaposes historic photographic works such as Anna Atkins’ cyanotypes, Karl Blossfeldt’s inventory of plant forms and Laure Albin Guillot’s microscope experiments with creations by contemporary artists such as Jochen Lempert, Pierre Joseph, Angelica Mesiti, Agnieszka Polska, and Sam Falls. Science/Fiction — A Non-History of Plants offers an opportunity to explore the special relationship between photography and video, two techniques for capturing images that were first used for scientific research, and plants. Instead of creating a distance between us and the natural world, these photographic and cinematic processes have highlighted plants’ subjectivity, intelligence, and expressive capacity, compensating for our ‘anthropocentric myopia’.

More info on MEP's website.

Festival Panoràmic 2024

Granollers, Barcelona and Terrassa, Spain / 10 October - 29 December

Directed by Joan Fontcuberta, Laia Casanova and Albert Gusi, and with an advisory team made up of Andrés Hispano, Mercè Alsina and Fèlix Pérez-Hita, the festival proposes a space of knowledge and reflection between the still image and the moving image. And it does so by deploying all the areas where the image is present to us, that is, through screenings of feature films and short films, video installations, video games, mappings, exhibitions, workshops, conferences, workshops, TV, installations facilities, archives, bibliography, photo books or interactive projects among others.

The central theme of the 8th edition is linked to the idea of Extremes, from the extreme violence and totalitarian ideologies of the accelerated 20th century, to the economic and social paradigm shifts of the 21st century, the post-historical and post-capitalist society, with new ideologies, utopias and models of organization. Among the exhibited artists are Boris Mikhaïlov, Thania Petersen, aruma | Sandra De Berduccy, Enric Maurí, Ro Caminal, Joel Jiménez Jara, Ramon Guimarães, Carmen Isasi, Izaro Ieregi, Jean Matthieu Gosselin and Ullic Morard, Miquel García, Aitana López, Osvaldo Cibils.

Discover the full program on the festival's website.

How Like A Leaf I Am by Alexandra Baumgartner at Photoforum Pasquart

Biel/Bienne, Switzerland / 15 September - 24 November

The exhibition invites visitors to reflect on the deep connections between humans and plants, focusing on the crucial issue of preserving seeds as a common good amidst the growing loss of agrobiodiversity. By combining photography and interactive elements, the exhibition fosters an emotional connection to the plant world, highlighting the key role of seeds. Oscillating between intensive research and introspective observation, How Like A Leaf I Am portrays gestures of resistance against the ongoing loss of seed diversity. Baumgartner wanders through the gardens of private seed keepers and visits state and community-run seed banks. She offers new perspectives on the relationship between humans and nature, urging us to reconsider our responsibility for the potential within these connections.

You can visit the exhibition until the 24th of November. Discover more on Photoforum Pasquart's website.

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Also open this month:

Bristol Photo Festival 2024 / Bristol, United Kingdom / 16 October - 20 October

The exhibition programme focuses on the personal stories of those confronting societal changes whilst navigating daily life. Confirmed artists include Akosua Viktoria Adu Sanyah, Kirsty Mackay, Amak Mahmoodian, Trent Parke, Sarker Protick and Hashem Shakeri. Each artist addresses a world in constant motion where social, political and environmental conditions are ever-evolving.

Radar Photo Festival 2024 / Trani, Italy / 4 October - 30 November

Radar is an international Festival of Photography that aims to intercept, disseminate and facilitate the exchange of ways of thinking, understanding and enjoyment of contemporary photography. The 4th edition talks about the Future, Ecology, Environment, Innovation. It wants to inform, raise awareness and disseminate more responsible behavior towards the environment as well as good artistic practices that favor the digital transition in favor of environmental sustainability, it wants to increase connections, community and identity bonds that make us love the place we live in and they push us towards attitudes of care and sensitivity.

Rencontres Photographie Marrakech 2024 / Marrakesh, Morocco / 23 October - 27 October

The festival is organized by the association Voix Plurielles, a cultural association created in 2018. Its mission is to develop cultural projects that contribute to the animation and enrichment of city life. Its activities span various fields such as art, organizing symposiums, and literary, artistic, and cultural meetings related to major cultural and civilizational issues. The conception of their projects is mainly based on creativity, as a source and motivation for individual, social, and economic development.

SCAN Tarragona Festival 2024 / Tarragona, Spain / 18 October - 15 December

SCAN Tarragona is an international photography festival organized by the City Council of Tarragona with the complicity of the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya. The aim is to offer a space for thought and creation around the most emerging photography.

212 Photography Istanbul 2024 / Istanbul, Turkey / 28 September - 13 October

212 Photography Istanbul is an international festival that takes place once a year offering a framework of cultural and educational programs including exhibitions, workshops, talks, panels, film screenings and more, in parallel with online event series. The event program is renewed every year and it diversifies from exhibitions to film screenings on the route of discovery, adopts the language of photography together with different disciplines that are independent from geographies, and brings together the remarkable names, titles and approaches in the art of photography with the audience in Istanbul.

Planches Contact 2024 / Deauville, France / 19 October - 5 January

Planches Contact is a festival that questions and reveals a city's multiple photographic identities. For Deauville, the festival is increasingly asserting itself as a creative and festive event, providing an opportunity each autumn to share the long and passionate relationship between a town, its inhabitants and visitors, and photography. Among this year's invited artists are Alessandro Calabrese, Bettina Pittaluga, Philip Toledano, Coco Amardeil, Sara Imloul, Patricia Morosan, Richard Pak, Huang Xiaoliang, Julien Migno and Dominique Issermann.