PHOTO 2020

Cristina de Middel, 'Benin, 2016'. From the series 'Midnight at the Crossroads', 2016. Courtesy Magnum Photos © Cristina de Middel/Magnum Photos.

PHOTO is a major new international festival of photography that will activate Melbourne and sites across Regional Victoria with the most inspiring photography from Australia and around the world.

Taking place every two years, the festival addresses the major issues of our time in a program of free exhibitions, outdoor displays and artist commissions across the city, as well as talks, film screenings, masterclasses, education programs and awards. Presenting ideas critical to contemporary photographic discourse, PHOTO encourages the public to engage with and think about photography and visual culture in new and inspiring ways.

The inaugural festival, PHOTO 2020, runs from 23 April to 10 May 2020 and is being delivered in collaboration with over 25 cultural institutions, museums, galleries and universities. The theme for PHOTO 2020 invites artists, curators, writers and academics to interrogate the relationship between photography and truth in the post-internet age.

Wominjeka (Welcome). We acknowledge the Yaluk-ut Weelam as the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet. Yaluk-ut Weelam means ‘people of the river camp’ and is connected with the coastal land at the head of Port Phillip Bay, extending from the Werribee River to Mordialloc. The Yaluk-ut Weelam are part of the Boon Wurrung, one of the five major language groups of the greater Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to the land, their ancestors and their elders—past, present and to the future.