Weekend timetable!
Saturday is the time to see the exhibitions with the authors and curators – join us at 11:30 am for a guided tour with Chris Niedenthal at the Museum of the City of Lodz, followed by a series of meetings in the festival center space Art_Inkubator from 12:30 pm. At 13:00 in the theater room, a conversation between Zbigniew Libera and Daniel Muzyczuk, referring to the premiere of the artist’s new works.
In the space of the center between 12:00 and 18:00 you will be able to meet Iacopo Pasqui and create your own photo publication by choosing the photographer’s favorite images from a series taken in Lodz.
Whether through photography we can achieve a real change in our environment, improve the condition of human (and not only human) life, and whether photographic interventions can be effective will be considered by Tomasz Ferenc (University of Lodz), Yulia Shablovskaya (Belarusian journalist, volunteer and photographer), Io Siversten (Norwegian artist, Fotofestiwal 2023 Open Program) and Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo (curator of exhibitions from the section of Fotofestiwal 2023 Hope Program). A panel discussion titled Photography in Action: contestation, activation and intervention organized in partnership with the University of Lodz will take place (in English) in the theater room at 5pm.
In the evening, we visit Lodz with the festival’s partners: at 18:00, the Academic Design Center will host the finale of the exhibition Euphoria. 2nd Art School Review, where the Audience Award and the Rector’s Award of the Wladyslaw Strzeminski Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz will be presented.
At 7pm, it’s all smiles, joy and… cute animals. At the Poleski Art Center we will open the exhibition The Unbearable Lightness of Being built on the basis of home archives and photographic collections of Lodz institutions such as Veolia and the Orientarium of the Lodz Zoo. We will end Saturday musically at the Villa in Poniatowski Park.
SUNDAY
Even in the biggest hustle and bustle of the festival, there must be time to sit at a communal table for a while, so on Sunday at 11:00 am we traditionaly meet at the Niewinni Café in the Art_Inkubator for a Late Breakfast with Photography Books. In a casual atmosphere, we will talk with authors and publishers of photography books: Tamsin Green (The Sustainable Photobook Publishers Network), Authors of the winning and awarded publications in the Photographic Publication of the Year 2023 contest and jury members, Grzegorz Przyborek, Olena Morozova, Michal Siarek, Ewa Ciechanowska and Artur Urbański, Kuba Dziewit, Students of the Jastrzębska School of Documentary Photography, Mariusz Śmiejek.
Sunday is also the time for more meetings and curator and author tours in the space of both the festival center and the Month of Photography in Minsk and Odesa Photo Days (15:00 and 16:00 OFF Piotrkowska) or the exhibition For Those Who Are No More. A Tribute to Bogdan Konopka (17:00 Eugeniusz Haneman Gallery of Photography).
A photographic field game, to which children and all adults are invited, will encourage us to look at our exhibitions in a different way. At 3:00 pm, participants in the game will receive mysterious envelopes with photographic tasks, which they will be able to solve by finding the information contained in the art projects or by taking their own photos and deciphering photo-rebuses.
The opening weekend will conclude with an exceptional film about Nan Goldin – her artistic and activist career, told from the perspective of Oscar-nominated director Laura Portrais. All This Beauty and the Bloodshed was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for Best Film, and it will open the Fotofestiwal’s film program, which will continue through the next week of the festival, including the premiere of a film about Grzegorz Przyborek.
ph. HAWA, Fotofestiwal 2023
