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No Pasarán by Natasha Christia, Julián Barón & Anna Jornet

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In July 1936, a fascist uprising led by General Franco attempted to overthrow Spain’s democratic government. In response, workers and peasants took up arms to fight back. What followed was a brutal civil war that foreshadowed the global conflict to come. Yet the war was also a moment of social revolution as ordinary workers mobilised to fight for a different vision of society. This sparked unprecedented international solidarity with volunteers from across the world—including Bristol and the surrounding region—joining the International Brigades in defence of the Spanish Republic. 

To mark the 90th anniversary of the war, the exhibition No Pasarán brings together the work of three Spanish artists and researchers engaged with themes of history and memory:

Julián Barón’s The Magic Labyrinth documents historical reenactments of the Spanish Civil War, staged across the country by reenactment troupes and attended by local audiences. Often described as the first media war due to its extensive documentation by photographers and filmmakers, the conflict established many of the visual tropes of war. Barón’s images play with these archetypes, creating a visual labyrinth of symbols that connects past and present while questioning how history is remembered, performed, and mediated. 

In The Dead Hours (Las Horas Muertas), Barón documents the fading graphite drawings and writings left by Republican militia members on the walls of an abandoned factory in Bajo Aragón that served as a barracks during the war. Through a forensic visual approach, he reveals these fragile inscriptions as an intimate archive of memory, preserving traces of lives that continue to inhabit the ruins.

Anna Jornet’s work centres on the story of her grandfather, who, shortly after the Spanish Civil War, was assigned by the Franco regime to a battalion of forced labourers tasked with repairing roads damaged during the conflict. He worked on the construction of a mountain pass intended to facilitate the movement of troops in preparation for a potential attack on British-controlled Gibraltar. The road becomes an allegory for the end of his youth, marking his conscription into a state project founded on coercion and violence. Through this deeply personal history, Jornet reveals the hidden narratives embedded within everyday infrastructure, asking how landscapes continue to bear the physical and psychological traces of authoritarian power.

Best known as a curator and writer, Natasha Christia is currently researching the visual history of the International Brigades, drawing upon state archives and informal collections, found across Spain, Greece and the UK. A selection of Christia’s materials will be presented as part of the exhibition, bringing to life memories of shared resistance. 

Biographies

Julián Barón is a photographer and educator, focussed on the role of photography as a catalyst for social thought. His practice examines how images shape memory, history and identity, challenging dominant narratives and collective imaginaries. Originally trained as an industrial engineer, Baron left his job as a quality assurance manager for a road signage company to join Blank Paper Collective, ultimately directing the Blank Paper School in Valencia (2008-2015). His first book, CENSURA (2011), was shortlisted for the Paris Photo/Aperture Foundation First Photobook Award. In 2015, he was nominated for the Discovery Prize at Rencontres d’Arles. Since then, his work has been shown at the  Centre d’Art Pompidou-Metz, the Netherlands Fotomuseum, the ChangJiang Biennale and Arts Santa Mònica. 

Anna Jornet initially studied economics and law before pursuing a career in photography. Her work explores the relationships between photography, memory and place, with a particular focus on personal and collective histories. She has exhibited widely, including: Ressons de la Memòria (Castell de Montjuïc, Barcelona, 2024-2025); This Story Will Never Get Finished (Museu d’Art Modern de Tarragona, 2023-2024); C-3331/CA-8201 (Casa de Cultura de Girona, 2022); and Ventura (Biennal d’Art de Tarragona, 2021-2022). Her debut book, C-3331/CA-8201, was published by Ventura Edicions (2022).

Natasha Christia is an independent curator, writer and educator based in Barcelona, specialising in photography, photobooks and archives. Her research explores how photographic documents shape and challenge dominant historical narratives and ideological myths. She has led projects for institutions and festivals including DocField Barcelona, Photo Saint Germain, Krakow Photomonth, PHOTO Australia and SCAN Festival. Alongside her curatorial practice, Christia writes extensively on photography and has edited award-winning publications. She has served on numerous international photography juries and has taught photography and visual culture in Spain and internationally since 2008. Born in Athens, she lives and works in Barcelona.

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George Hallett: Home & Exile

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George Hallett: Home and Exile brings together works by Cape Town-born South African photographer George Hallett (1942-2020) who lived in exile in Europe from 1970 to the mid-1990s.

Introduced to literature, music and visual arts by South African authors Richard Rive (1931-1989), James Matthews (1929-2024), and visual artist Peter Clarke (1929-2014), Hallett developed his practice as a self-taught street photographer in Cape Town in the 1960s. His early images depict street scenes in places such as the neighbourhood of District Six, Black communities, and cultural figures and moments that were to become a major theme throughout his career. 

As a South African of mixed heritage, his experience of discrimination during apartheid, and the lack of professional opportunities, led him to exile. He first settled in England in the early 1970s before moving to France and the Netherlands. In Europe, and on visits to the United States and other parts of the world, Hallett photographed both South African exile and Black life with the intention of creating a visual record that restored dignity to a people that was either absent or misrepresented in mainstream media. In doing so, he created an incredible photographic archive of Black resistance and resilience both in the place from which he was exiled, and the places that he called home.

In Bristol, George Hallett: Home and Exile takes its cue from an article published in 1966 in the Western Daily Press announcing a talk by South African author, journalist, and political activist Alex La Guma (1924-1985) in the venue formerly known as Colston Hall. The exhibition presents a selection of images around the figure of La Guma, as well as other South African writers, visual artists, and jazz musicians who left their country because of apartheid’s repressive laws. The display also includes examples of Hallett’s designs for book covers of the African Writers Series published in Britain by Heinemann, and record sleeves created for the jazz label Ogun Records.

First presented at Clémentine de la Féronnière in Paris in March 2025 as part of Centre Pompidou’s programme “Échos Paris noir”, the exhibition was subsequently shown at Exhibition Research Lab (ERL) Gallery, Liverpool. For Bristol Photo Festival, it is presented at IC Visual Lab, located at 6 West Street—the former home of the Southern Africa Resource Centre (SARC), an organisation that campaigned against apartheid. 

Biographies

George Hallett (1942–2020) was a self-taught photographer from Cape Town, South Africa. He exhibited at Clémentine de la Féronnière, Paris (2025); Peltz Gallery, London (2023); Michaelis Galleries, Cape Town (2022); Bozar, Brussels (2018); Bamako Encounters: African Biennale of Photography, Bamako (2017); and EVA International, Ormston House, Limerick (2016). He was also included in Rise and Fall of Apartheid: Photography and the Bureaucracy of Everyday Life, curated by Okwui Enwezor at the International Center of Photography, New York (2012), which toured to Haus der Kunst, Munich and Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea, Milan (2013), and Museum Africa, Johannesburg (2014–15).

His work is held in numerous private and public collections, including Iziko – South African Art Gallery; Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town; District Six Museum and Bo-Kaap Museum, Cape Town; and the Library of Birmingham, UK.

Christine Eyene is an art historian and curator. She is currently Curator of French Institute Cameroon’s 2027 cultural season. From 2022 to 2026, she was Senior Lecturer in Contemporary Art and Co-Director of ERL Gallery, Liverpool John Moores University. Prior to that, she worked for 10 years with Pr. Lubaina Himid CBE RA on the project Making Histories Visible at the University of Lancashire.

Her research and curating encompass contemporary art from a global perspective, with an interest in African and Diaspora arts. Her practice also engages with socially oriented initiatives, urban culture, new media, music, design, and architecture.

In 2024 she completed her PhD in History of Art at Birkbeck, University of London, under the supervision of Professor Annie E. Coombes. Her thesis focuses on the relationship between text, African literature, and visual representation in the work of George Hallett.

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People of Clay by Akshay Mahajan

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“It took me many years to notice that, in the hush between conversations, she would sing. Simple tunes tinged with a gentle melancholy drifted through the room, sung in a tongue I had yet to decipher — folk songs belonging to a people all but erased from the map. ‘What are folk songs for?’ I once asked her. ‘They’re like prayers, or like roadmaps of a people,’ she answered. Those melodies became my compass.” Akshay Mahajan

Akshay Mahajan’s People of Clay (2016–present) traces the hidden histories embedded along the Brahmaputra River as it winds through India’s Goalpara region and across the border into northern Bangladesh. As Mahajan writes, “colonial survey lines cleaved one landscape into many, and the people caught in between were flattened into shorthand.” The project seeks to reverse this erasure by reconstructing the layers of story, myth and memory that shape the region. The result is a subjective cartography, formed through slow observation, listening and engagement.

The work draws extensively on myths and folktales. In the legend of Behula, a husband is cursed and killed by a snakebite, his body set adrift on the river. Refusing to abandon him, his grieving wife climbs onto the raft and accompanies him downstream. Though dismissed by others as mad, her devotion is ultimately rewarded when a goddess restores her husband to life. In People of Clay, Mahajan reimagines this moment, depicting Behula leaning gently over her husband’s body to retrieve a water hyacinth. Through such reinterpretations, the artist brings folklore into the present, allowing ancient stories to continue evolving.

Throughout the exhibition, Mahajan combines photography, collage and found materials, working through an iterative process in which a single image becomes the starting point for layers of addition and transformation. He compares this approach to the telling of a grandmother’s tale, where new details emerge with each retelling. The resulting works function as mnemonic devices, revealing narratives and memories overlooked or erased from official archives.

Yet People of Clay is not only an act of remembrance. As Mahajan writes: “My intention is simple: to recall that we are all people of clay, our contours forever provisional, never fully bound to the frontiers we inherit. And, like me, you may find that a single, unguarded song is enough to press a new, more generous outline into being.”

Biography

Akshay Mahajan (b. 1985, India) is an artist that uses photography and collage as tools to explore collective memory. His practice examines postcolonial cities, landscapes, folklore and mythology, to reveal how past, present and future are always entangled, shaped through varied forms of power. His work observes how our postcolonial reality is often anchored in pre-colonial stories and memories, using the camera as a tool to lay bare these connections. With a discerning eye, Mahajan explores how the physical structures and spaces in the non-western world can become emblematic of unfulfilled aspirations and unrealised potentials due to unresolved historiography. In terms of method, he uses images as a starting point to build large-scale assemblages that combine both found and archival materials. He describes this process as one of ‘radical citation’, allowing multiple voices to flow through his work. 

Mahajan has exhibited widely, including: Vezasca Photo Festival, Singapore International Festival of Arts, Jogja Fotografis Festival, Athens International Photo Festival, Foam Museum, Cairo Biennale, Bamako Encounters and the Jakarta International Photography Festival. Awards include the Verzasca Foto Festival Award (2024), Foam Talent (2024), and the Aperture Portfolio Prize shortlist (2023).

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One of Many: An Alternative History of Photography

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The birth of photography has long been a contested narrative between the United Kingdom and France, often centred around figures such as Nicéphore Niépce and William Henry Fox Talbot. One of Many opens that conversation outwards, acknowledging that the history of photography is not singular but multiple. Histories are shaped as much by what they exclude as by what they include this project seeks to foreground those omissions and propose alternative viewpoints.


Through a cross-cultural dialogue between France and the United Kingdom, we bring together perspectives from leading curators, scholars, and institutions to explore how photographic histories are constructed and how they might be reimagined.

Invited selectors:
Mark Seally (Autograph), Taous Dahmani (The Photographers’ Gallery), Christine Eyene (Independent Curator), Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo (ENSP Arles) and Annabel Lacour (Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac).

Biographies

Annabel Lacour (Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris)

Annabel Lacour is a curator and researcher at the Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris. Her work explores the histories of photography, colonial archives and cross-cultural visual histories, with a focus on expanding photographic narratives beyond the traditional Western canon.

Christine Eyene (Independent Curator)

Christine Eyene is an art historian, curator and writer. Her research and curatorial practice focus on contemporary African and Diaspora art, with particular interests in photography, feminism and the politics of representation.

Mark Sealy (Autograph, London)

Mark Sealy OBE is Director of Autograph, London. A curator, writer and researcher, his work examines photography’s relationship to race, representation, human rights and the legacies of colonialism. Through his exhibitions and publications, he has played a leading role in expanding the histories and critical discourse of photography.

Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo (École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie (ENSP), Arles)

Sergio Valenzuela is an independent curator, founder of DoubleDummy and Head of Research at the École Nationale Supérieure de la Photographie (ENSP), Arles. His work spans curating, research and publishing, with a particular focus on contemporary photography, exhibition-making and the critical histories of the medium.

Taous Dahmani (The Photographers’ Gallery, London)

Taous Dahmani is an art historian, curator and writer specialising in photography. Since 2015, she has been curator at The Photographer’s Gallery in London. Her research explores the relationship between photography and politics, with a particular focus on the representation of social struggles, migration, race and feminist histories through the photographic image.

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Family Times by Annie Wang & Liu Hsing Yu

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Drawing on the work of Liu Hsing Yu and Annie Wang, Family Times explores how family relationships are never fixed but continually reshaped by time, memory, care and changing social expectations. Both artists use photography to revisit intimate relationships across many years, treating time not simply as subject matter but as an active material within their practice.

In 2009, while visiting his family in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, Liu Hsing Yu discovered his parents’ 1984 wedding photograph alongside the suit his father had worn for the ceremony. Recreating the image with his parents’ roles reversed—his mother in the suit and his father in a borrowed wedding dress—became the starting point for an ongoing series My Father and Mother. Liu went on to photograph his parents wearing one another’s wedding attire at the former homes of long-deceased relatives across rural Taiwan. These performative acts became a ritual through which he communicated the social transformations of contemporary Taiwan, including the legalisation of same-sex marriage and the growing visibility of LGBT+ communities, to his ancestors. At the same time, the project marked a deeply personal homecoming, allowing Liu to navigate his own coming out through a return to family history and ancestral landscape.

Annie Wang’s The Mother as a Creator (2007–present) offers a sustained meditation on motherhood over seventeen years. Each year, Wang photographs herself and her son before returning the following year to make another portrait in front of the previous image. As successive photographs accumulate, multiple moments in time collapse into a single image, producing what Wang describes as a visual “time tunnel”. Different versions of mother and child coexist, revealing motherhood not as a fixed identity but as an evolving relationship shaped by duration, intimacy and change.

Together, these two practices reveal family as both subject and method. Rather than presenting family as a stable unit, they foreground it as something continually remade through ritual, repetition and care. One work reflects on the changing relationship between parents and their child, the other on the evolving bond between mother and son. They offer complementary perspectives on kinship, identity and belonging, demonstrating how photography can make visible the slow, often imperceptible transformations that shape family life across generations. 

Biographies

Liu Hsing Yu’s work centres on themes of gender, sexuality and human relationships with ecological environments, particularly in relation to Taiwan. For Liu, photography is a participatory medium that enables collaborations with others, working together to challenge conventional perspectives. Major international presentations include Centre Pompidou Paris (2019) and Kyotographie Japan (2025), where he was the recipient of the inaugural KG+Select Award. He was also nominated for the 2018 Taipei Arts Awards. Liu holds an MFA degree from the National Kaohsiung Normal University. 

Annie Wang’s artistic practice focuses on issues of gender and the role of women within society. She has presented her work internationally, at festivals including: Images Vevey, Switzerland (2020), Daegu Photo Biennale, Korea (2021), Photo Australia (2022) and Paris Photo (2023). Her works are held in multiple permanent collections, including: the Museum of Fine Arts Houston (U.S.A), The J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles, U.S.A), the George Eastman Museum (Rochester, U.S.A), Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, U.S.A), the Harry Rison Center (Austin, U.S.A), The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)  (San Francisco, U.S.A) and Tainan Museum of Art (Taiwan). She is also the director of the Cing Tien Art Space and an Assistant Professor at National Hong Dwa University (Taiwan).

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Beyond the Bounds by Holly Lynton

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For more than fifteen years, Holly Lynton has explored the intersections of faith, history, labour and landscape across rural communities in the United States. Her ongoing project Beyond the Bounds (2019–present) examines places shaped by moments of spiritual awakening—from towns founded by psychics in Florida to healing springs in South Carolina. Once centres of ecstatic belief and religious revival, these sites are now often quiet communities where faith persists not through dramatic revelation, but in the rhythms of everyday life.

Through a slow, collaborative approach, Lynton traces the enduring role of faith in American culture, revealing how landscapes continue to bear the imprint of successive religious movements. Her photographs consider the communities that sought refuge to practise their beliefs, often in opposition to the societies they left behind. At a time when religion remains deeply woven into public life in the United States, Beyond the Bounds explores how histories of faith continue to shape the nation’s landscapes, communities and ways of life. 

Holly Lynton was the winner of the Bristol Photo Festival Open Call in 2024 in collaboration with Hapax Magazine.

Biography

Working across photography, writing and archival research, Holly Lynton documents contemporary rituals rooted in history, examining how cultural memory shapes the ways images are seen and understood. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; the Yale University Art Gallery; and the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, New Jersey. Her first monograph, Bare Handed, was published by L’Artiere Edizioni in 2022. Lynton has received numerous awards, including an Aaron Siskind Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, the Archive of Documentary Arts Collection Award at Duke University, and a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship. Her work is held in major public collections, including the Yale University Art Gallery, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art Watson Library, Tate Library, the Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University, the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona, and the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University. She lives and works in rural Massachusetts.

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STRAY SOD by Maria Lax

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“There are certain places which the fairies have power over at night and if anybody goes into them after dusk, he cannot come out until morning though he may be walking all night.” — Irish National Folklore Collection 

Stray Sod investigates the phenomenon of the same name in Irish folklore: enchanted patches of earth that will lead astray anyone who steps on them. Inspired by first-hand accounts preserved in the Irish National Folklore Collection, Maria Lax reimagines rural Irish landscapes through this otherworldly lens. 

The stories describe instances in which individuals are forced to navigate a world characterised by sudden shifts into unfamiliarity and strangeness. A world in which established reference points distort and slip away, causing great distress to those experiencing it. Stray Sod draws timely parallels between these historic stories and the destabilising effects of today’s fast-changing political and technological environment.

“Many of the stray sod accounts seem to take place during periods of great change, such as a time of grieving, but can be equally seen as a metaphor for depression, addiction, shifting political landscapes or rapid technological advancements that have the power to completely upend our lives. They are stories about becoming lost; about the invisible realities that can change our lives overnight, and the unknown landscapes through which we must travel.” 

Biography

Maria Lax is a Finnish photographer and director based in London. Her work draws on folklore, beliefs and the otherworldly; themes that flow effortlessly into her work.

Her commercial portfolio includes collaborations with leading brands such as Apple, Channel 4, Vogue Italia, Chanel, Virgin Records and Samsung. Her first directing commission was a multi-award winning Channel 4 ident, and since then she has been nominated for the Young Director Award in Cannes (2025), and for the Creative Circle’s Most Promising Commercial Director Award (2025).

Maria’s work has been exhibited in more than fourteen countries and was recently featured in the Taylor Wessing Photo Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery. She has published two sold-out photobooks, Some Kind of Heavenly Fire (Setanta Books, 2020) and Taken by the Tide (Nazraeli Press, 2023). Her third book, Stray Sod, exploring Irish folklore, will be published in 2026.

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Cultural Partnerships

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Bristol Photo Festival is one of the UK’s most ambitious photography festivals — an international platform for contemporary image-making that transforms the city through exhibitions, public installations, education projects, and community-led programmes. Working across museums, galleries, public spaces, vacant buildings, libraries, and neighbourhood venues, the festival brings together globally recognised artists alongside emerging local voices, creating meaningful cultural experiences that are both internationally focused and locally grounded.

For businesses and brands, partnering with Bristol Photo Festival offers far more than traditional sponsorship visibility. It is an opportunity to become part of a dynamic cultural conversation around creativity, community, identity, and the future of visual culture. Our partnerships are designed to be collaborative, flexible, and tailored — allowing organisations to engage audiences through authentic cultural experiences with lasting social and creative impact.

The festival attracts a broad and highly engaged audience, including young creatives, students, cultural audiences, industry professionals, and international visitors. In 2024, the festival welcomed more than 115,000 visitors across 16 exhibitions and 14 venues, alongside a growing digital audience of over 25,000 social media followers and 9,000 newsletter subscribers. National and international press coverage has included The Guardian, Financial Times Magazine, BBC Arts, British Journal of Photography, and Le Monde.

Our cultural partnerships create opportunities for brands to align with internationally respected artists, socially engaged programming, and innovative public events. Partners can support major exhibitions, opening week events, education programmes, artist commissions, community projects, walking tours, residencies, public talks, and immersive activations across the city. From co-branded campaigns and artist collaborations to workshops and public installations, we work closely with partners to create meaningful and memorable experiences that connect with audiences in genuine ways.

At the heart of Bristol Photo Festival is a commitment to access, participation, and long-term cultural value. We believe successful partnerships are built on shared ambition, creativity, and mutual benefit. Whether supporting emerging talent, activating empty spaces, engaging local communities, or reaching new audiences through contemporary culture, our partners play an active role in shaping the festival and its impact across Bristol and beyond.

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III Edition Bristol Photo Festival Biennial Announced With the Theme‘Time Machine’

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Holly Lynton, Hero, Florence, Massachusetts, 2022 © Holly Lynton

Festival opening week 14 – 18 October 2026. Festival runs until 15 November 2026
bristolphotofestival.org
Press kit with initial images HERE

Drawing on the success of the second edition, which drew over 115,000 visitors, the third edition of Bristol Photo Festival, the international biennial of contemporary photography, will open this autumn with exhibitions and events staged across Bristol’s major visual arts institutions as well as independent and unconventional spaces. Alongside the programme, the Festival will deliver a series of long-term engagement and education projects, working with local communities to explore overlooked aspects of the city’s story.

Entitled Time Machine, the third edition explores time as interwoven, where past, present and future fold into one another. Rooted in these understandings of time as cyclical, the Festival considers our present moment as a porous convergence — haunted and nourished by memory, imagination and anticipation. In this context, photography becomes more than documentation; it is an active entanglement with time itself. Images are spaces where memory and possibility coexist, and where time accumulates, loops and returns.

As Alejandro Acín, Festival Director, explains “This edition of the Festival explores how photography unsettles the idea of time as a single line. By bringing together international and local artists, the programme offers a constellation of fresh and thoughtful practices that engage with history, memory and dreams of the future in layered and unexpected ways. We cannot wait to announce the exhibition programme in July. At a moment when the arts and cultural sector is facing significant challenges across the UK, this edition required new ways of thinking, working and collaborating. We are especially excited to partner with outstanding local and international cultural organisations whose shared commitment and support make the Festival possible.”

Bristol Photo Festival is shaped by the movements, ideas and histories of Bristol. The festival includes exhibitions, talks and workshops, bringing together leading international photographic voices in dialogue with the city’s many communities.

The opening week of Bristol Photo Festival will take place from 14 – 18 October 2026, with a wide range of talks and events organised across the city. All exhibitions will be open until 15 November 2026, with presentations in the main partner institutions continuing beyond this date. Please see the website for further details – bristolphotofestival.org

The main cultural partners are: Arnolfini, Bristol Museums, Martin Parr Foundation, Watershed, University of the West of England, Brigstow Institute and University of Bristol alongside independent art and community organisations.

For further information, images and interview requests please contact Sam Trenerry: samtrenerry@yahoo.com/ +44 (0)7780 991 811

Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2026 Shortlist.

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We are extremely happy to see Amak Mahmoodian amongst the shortlisted artists for Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2026 alongside Jane Evelyn Atwood, Weronika Gęsicka and Rene Matić.  

Amak Mahmoodian has been nominated for her exhibition One Hundred and Twenty Minutes, which explores the experience of exile through dreams. Working with 16 collaborators who’ve been displaced from their homelands, Amak used photography, poetry, drawing, and video to evoke the emotional landscapes of memory, longing and imagined return.

We premiered this long-term body of work in collaboration with Multistory with a very special exhibition 17 Midland Road at Bristol Photo Festival ‘The World a Wave’ last year.

The Prize, originally established in 1996, identifies and rewards artists for an exhibition or book that has made a significant contribution to photography in the past 12 months. Over its long history, the Prize is renowned for spotlighting outstanding and innovative work and celebrating the work of leading international photographers.   The 2026 shortlisted work features collaborative photographic projects; long-term investigative documentary photography; installations, video and sound pieces; and experimental conceptual photography.   The thought-provoking, powerful shortlist explores themes of exile and memory; gender inequalities and advocacy; identity and belonging, subculture and class in contemporary life; and the shifting boundaries between photographic fact and fiction.  

The exhibition of selected work from the four artists’ shortlisted projects will be at The Photographers’ Gallery, London, from 6 March to 7 June 2026.  It will then be on display from 3 September 2026 to 17 January 2027 at the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation in Eschborn/Frankfurt. The winner of the £30,000 prize will be announced on Thursday 14 May, with each of the other shortlisted artists receiving £5,000. Details of the exhibition and award ceremony will be announced in early 2026.  

The 2026 Prize highlights themes of exile and memory; gender inequalities and advocacy; identity and belonging; subculture and class; and the shifting boundaries between photographic fact and fiction. Amak joins a great shortlist alongside: Jane Evelyn Atwood, Weronika Gęsicka and Rene Matić

We can’t wait to see this great project shown again in the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery from March 2026.

Read Full press release HERE.