Radioactive trees to fighting fish: the best of Photoworks festival 2026
There are origami cats, Ecuadorian midwives and painful images from the Ukraine war at this year’s event, all under the theme ‘Un/Stable: Lands, Anxieties, Dreams’
TL;DR
- The Photoworks festival 2026 theme is ‘Un/Stable: Lands, Anxieties, Dreams’.
- The festival aims to explore the overlap of human identity, memory, and environments, using photography for agency and social transformation.
- It features artists examining subjects like ecosystems, forest restoration, domestic violence, consequences of war, and marginalized communities.
- Specific works include a diary of fragility and loss by a South Asian immigrant, a series inspired by the Thames river, and photography exploring colonial legacies in Bangladesh.
- Other featured artists explore landscape, fashion, human-technology relations, analogue techniques, and slave trade history.
- Johanna Alarcón presents a project on Indigenous maternal healthcare in Ecuador.
- Photo Fringe 2026 focuses on grassroots values like artist-led participation and community connection, inviting submissions for exhibitions in various venues.
- The festival highlights themes of resilience in the face of ecological disaster, using Chernobyl's Reactor 5 and a collaborative series on plastic waste in Sri Lanka as examples.
- Photoworks festival 2026 runs from 2 October to 1 November in Brighton and Hove, UK.
- Photo Fringe runs from 2-31 October.