Photography and Festivals
15 Years Belfast Photo Festival

This special issue of PhotoResearcher aims to inspire scholars, curators, and artists to reflect on photography festivals in an academic context and to investigate them as a phenomenon; a particular mode of presentation, circulation, and production of images. 

Although photography festivals are not yet an established field of research in the history or theory of photography, readers of PhotoResearcher No. 43 will encounter a combination of international voices positioning festivals in a variety of socio-cultural settings: As engines of collaboration with local museums, as contributors to the visibility of the climate crisis, as engines of artistic production, etc. The inspiration behind this publication stems from the desire to honour the legacy of Belfast Photo Festival, which was founded back in 2009, and to take stock of how it changed the ecosystem which gave rise to it. Also, this collaborative publication expands BPF’s experiences through the journal’s authors and their unique perspectives in order to learn from them and to keep this unique form of experiencing photography alive and thriving.