The international festival of photography in Łódź, Fotofestiwal, celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. Opening on 18 June, the festival presents a series of exhibitions that explore the concept of collective experience, moving beyond a binary world of 'us' and 'them'.
Exhibition Highlights
Tommaso Protti's work captures the brutal reality of life in the Amazon, where environmental exploitation and violence against local communities are intertwined. One striking image shows cattle being washed before slaughter at the Sita slaughterhouse in Uruara, Brazil, in 2022.
Chinese artist Feng Li, born in the Year of the Pig, presents a deeply personal project examining the boundary between livestock and companionship. His rescue pig, found abandoned at an airport security checkpoint, offers a counterpoint to his earlier view of these animals as a resource, shaped by his grandfather's work at a meat processing plant.
In her project Spit, Polish photographer Ola Skowrońska interprets the violent environmental history of the Curonian Spit in Lithuania, where wind and water have transformed forests into barren landscapes.
Luke Stephenson's An Incomplete Dictionary of Show Birds provides insight into the world of bird-keeping. The project turned him into a collector of birds, as he photographed each species and added it to his collection.
Mexican-American photographer Philip Montgomery examines a decade of social and political upheaval in American Cycles, reflecting the realities of contemporary American life.
In Animal Logic, Richard Barnes focuses on hidden, behind-the-scenes tableaux of natural history museums, highlighting how unnatural these depictions of the natural world are.
Adrian Chmielewski's Eclipse documents the intersection of alternative music culture, festivals, and photography.
Tommaso Protti's work examines the brutal reality of life in the Amazon, where environmental exploitation and violence against local communities are interlinked.
Nikita Teryoshin's Backyard Diaries showcases the real lives of urban cats, contrasting with the memes and cute cat fodder of the internet.
Jordanian-American photographer Tanya Habjouqa documents the life she left after leaving her homeland in 2023, in the project Neither the Shadow nor the Sun.
Nepalese artist Arhant Shrestha examines the aftermath of his experience of a homophobic attack in Kathmandu in Loose Fist.
