Introduction

Based in Melbourne and operating across Victoria, PHOTO 2021 is a new vision for photography in Australia.

Originally intended to launch as PHOTO 2020, against all the odds the Festival is now celebrating its debut program with 94 free exhibitions and artist projects featuring over 160 artists from more than 25 countries.

United by the central theme of ‘The Truth’, the works exhibited at PHOTO 2021 question the veracity of the photographic image in a time of social media, fake news, and artificial intelligence. In this age of unparalleled social, psychological and technological shifts, the relationship between photography and truth has never been more fascinating, complex, or urgent.

The Festival is dedicated to new photography and new ideas. Alongside PHOTO 2021’s curation and commissioning of dozens of artist projects taking over public spaces across Melbourne, our exhibition partners have expertly curated their own venues. The result is a monumental assembly of images for you to explore, with the vast majority of these premiering at the Festival or being presented in Australia for the first time.

Revealing both political and personal truths, PHOTO 2021 will take you on a journey through Melbourne, and beyond. It will take you on a trail of exhibitions and public art located throughout the centre of Melbourne, from the Royal Botanic Gardens to the Parliament of Victoria, where questions of truth will be brought to the very heart of democracy. It will reveal over 500 metres of photography on hoardings with the Metro Tunnel Creative Program. It will surprise you with photography on billboards, on building facades, down laneways and outside landmarks such as State Library Victoria and St Paul’s Cathedral. It will transform Argyle Square in Carlton into an outdoor gallery of provocative, contemporary portraiture.

The Festival extends through the Inner North, South, East and Western suburbs and into regional Victoria. You’ll be in the presence of First Nations stories, and witness the realities of lives in faraway towns and cities. You’ll discover how new technologies are shifting our sense of reality, and challenging the authenticity of the photographic image.

Alongside the very best international artists and photographers—Zanele Muholi, Sam Contis, Simon Fujiwara, Emmanuelle Andrianjafy, Daniel Shea and Broomberg & Chanarin, to name a few—you’ll encounter truly great work from established and emerging Australian talents such as Brook Andrew, Hoda Afshar, Eliza Hutchison and Hayley Millar-Baker.

PHOTO 2021 is progressive, supportive and resolutely democratic, featuring artists from a vast range of backgrounds, and experiences, and at different stages of their careers. This is a festival where the most exciting emerging artists are given a platform alongside names of great significance to tell their stories. All the exhibitions and outdoor displays are free, inviting everyone to engage with the ideas, questions and experiments happening at the forefront of contemporary photographic practice.

For anyone unable to attend in person, or keen to immerse themselves further, the PHOTO Channel can be found online at photo.org.au/channel and features an abundance of related content including essays, artist talks and interviews. Events including PHOTO IDEAS and PHOTO LIVE will be livestreamed during the Festival and over a dozen exhibitions from our expanded program come to life online with virtual tours and more.

PHOTO 2021 is a living, pulsing pageant of human exploration, celebration and questioning—a tour of what’s happening now in the world of photography, and what’s coming next. It connects Australia with the international photography community and galvanises Melbourne’s role as a global hub for photography and visual art.

Whether you are a skilled photographer, a seasoned art connoisseur, or you’ve never attended any kind of festival ever before, you—the viewer—are the critical, animating force of PHOTO 2021.

ELIAS REDSTONE Artistic Director, PHOTO 2021

Image: Sara, Peter & Tobias, from the series The Merge (detail), 2017 – 2020. Presented exclusively in Australia for PHOTO 2021—see page 15.