A cultural hub in the heart of Botanic Gardens, the Photo-Book Library is far more than a reading room. It is a celebration of publishing, sequencing and book-making through photography, bringing together the photo-book winners of the 2026 International Open Submission alongside a wide-ranging selection of must-see publications from across the globe.

Framed by this year’s festival theme, ‘Horizons’, the library opens out onto multiple ways of seeing and understanding the world. Across these books, artists trace lives shaped by migration, conflict, ecology, family, memory, architecture, intimacy and political change. Some work through long-form documentary, others through staged images, archives, experimental forms or quiet acts of observation. Together, they show how the photo-book remains one of the most powerful and personal ways to encounter photography today.

The photo-book format offers something distinct within the festival: time, proximity and sequence. It allows viewers to slow down, follow an artist’s thinking, and experience a body of work as it was meant to unfold. In a festival shaped by ‘Horizons’, this library becomes a place of pause and discovery, where distant geographies, private histories and urgent contemporary questions are held in the hand and encountered between the pages.

Featured artists: