PhotoVogue Festival 2026 Celebrates Women by Women in Milan
The PhotoVogue festival 2026, held from 1-4 March during Milan fashion week at the Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense, presents a powerful central exhibition titled Women by Women. This showcase celebrates how women express and imagine themselves while confronting the growing fragility of their rights and visibility globally. Featuring diverse photographic works, the festival explores themes from sacred sisterhood to hyper-sexualised models, offering a multifaceted look at female experiences.
Exploring Identity and Resilience Across Continents
Highlights include Jinyong Lian's Trust Me series, which presents semi-fictional portraits of Asian women delving into self-doubt and emotional control. Bettina Pittaluga's She Saw Me focuses on erasure and domination, capturing women and LGBTQ+ individuals with a gaze built on trust. Elsa Hammarén documents her relationship with Andie, a young trans woman in Brooklyn, examining the dynamic between photographer and muse.
Magdalena Wosinska's Mama series is a poignant eight-year meditation on care, photographing her mother through illness and eventual death to reclaim a woman diminished by migration and invisibility. Kiana Hayeri's No Woman's Land, Afghanistan documents life under a regime that erases women from public spaces, highlighting restriction and quiet defiance behind closed doors, rather than reducing Afghan women to symbols of victimhood.
Challenging Norms and Celebrating Strength
Keerthana Kunnath's Not What You Saw features female bodybuilders from south India who challenge traditional femininity, placing them in recognisable Indian settings with traditional clothing to confound categorisation. Carla Rossi's Bellissima follows Rebecca, an 18-year-old aspiring model in Italy, exposing the hyper-sexualised beauty industry and the staged, disciplined nature of beauty.
Clara Belleville's Girls captures everyday moments of women in her life, while Delali Ayivi's Togo Family Ties approaches womanhood as a sacred, generative force, portraying sisterhood as infrastructure and women as complex, spiritual beings.
Ukrainian and Asian Artistic Voices
The festival also includes Futurespective, in collaboration with Vogue Ukraine, showcasing a new generation of Ukrainian artists. Daniel Vaysberg's Archive series, shot in Kharkiv and Berlin, explores moving beyond one's upbringing. Tania Shcheglova specialises in inner world portraiture, presenting multilayered beings inseparable from their environment.
Volodymyr Kaminetsky's Twins offers a sensual portrait of Ukrainian brothers in Paris, and Alina Prisich's Tatko examines the line between childhood and adulthood in wartime Ukraine. Ira Lupu's Kseniya's Hair focuses on trauma, while Elena Subach's work weaves personal and collective histories, questioning religion and Soviet legacy.
From east and southeast Asia, Zhang Ahuei's Lullaby of the Moon creates poetic, surreal portraits, and Ramona Jingru Wang explores how images interrupt reality. Lean Lui's White Barracks imagines a fictional island with girl cadets, symbolising discipline and imperial iconography.
This festival underscores the diverse and resilient narratives of women worldwide, using photography as a tool for expression and critique.
