‘Horizons’ invites artists and audiences to consider what lies beyond our present technological, environmental, social, economic and geopolitical boundaries. It builds on photography’s long history as a means of bearing witness to the world’s vastness, while recognising that the medium itself stands again at a new threshold.
For many, horizons suggest the unknown: places not yet reached, stories not yet told, and futures still taking shape. But the horizon in 2026 is not only out in the world. It is also within photography itself. As image-making becomes more digital, automated and AI-driven, questions of truth, materiality, authorship and trust come sharply into view.
Featured Exhibitions
âš² Belfast Exposed
Camera Obsolete?
4 June - 4 July | Dawn to Dusk
'Camera Obsolete?' is a participatory installation and major public exhibition confronting the collapse of photography’s mechanical era. Conceived and produced by Belfast Photo Festival, audiences are invited to destroy, dismantle, recast or resist the transformation of obsolete cameras into new sculptural forms. Part participation, part spectacle and part material transformation, the exhibition forces questions of authorship, truth and the erosion of photography as a physical, tangible medium.
âš² Botanic Gardens
How was your Dream? | Thaddé Comar
4 June - 5 July | Dawn to Dusk
‘How Was Your Dream?’ is a documentary photographic project created during the Hong Kong protests of 2019. The work addresses new forms of demonstration and insurrection in an era shaped by increasingly seamless systems of control.
âš² Belfast Exposed
Beneath The Surface
Ulster University MFA Photography 2026
4 June - 23 July | Tues - Sat 11am - 5pm
‘Beneath The Surface’ showcases recently graduated artists from the MFA in Photography at Ulster University, bringing together a collective yet deeply personal inquiry into the act of looking.
âš² Botanic Gardens
Acedia | Louise Desnos
4 June - 5 July | Dawn to Dusk
‘Acedia’ reflects on laziness, idleness and introspection as both a personal state and a quiet form of resistance. Through images of stillness, drift and everyday non-events, Louise Desnos explores time, doubt and the fragile line between freedom and melancholy.
âš² Botanic Gardens
The Journey Home From School | Laura Pannack
4 June - 5 July | Dawn to Dusk
The Journey Home explores the daily walk to and from school in Cape Town’s gang-governed Cape Flats, where the threat of violence shapes ordinary childhood routines. Made collaboratively with young participants, the work offers an intimate portrait of adolescence, danger and resilience.
âš² Botanic Gardens
Other Joys
Alice Poyzer
4 June - 5 July | Dawn to Dusk
‘Other Joys’ is an ongoing body of work exploring the intensity of special interests through self-portraits, documentary images and constructed scenes. Rooted in Alice Poyzer’s experience as an autistic woman, it becomes both an expression of autistic joy and a call for greater representation.
âš² Botanic Gardens
Modality
Vahram Aghasyan
4 June - 5 July | Dawn to Dusk
‘Modality’ presents Armenian artist Vahram Aghasyan’s images of unfinished Soviet residential buildings suspended within a snow-covered Armenian landscape. Through these incomplete structures, the work reflects on interruption, failed futures and the lingering presence of unrealised social ambition.
âš² Botanic Gardens
Florida Boys
Josh Aronson
4 June - 5 July | Dawn to Dusk
‘Florida Boys’ is a series of staged photographs made across Florida’s backroads between 2020 and 2025. Working with groups of young men in forests, springs and swamps, Josh Aronson explores tenderness, vulnerability and play as alternatives to inherited ideas of masculinity.
âš² Botanic Gardens
Beyond the Steppe
Cléa T. Rekhou
4 June - 5 July | Dawn to Dusk
‘Beyond the Steppe’ examines the accelerating effects of desertification in the Algerian steppe through the lives of those who depend on and protect the land. Focusing on herders in Laghouat and Djelfa, Cléa T. Rekhou explores resilience, ecological fragility and adaptation in a changing environment.
âš² Botanic Gardens
The White Barracks
Lean Lui
4 June - 5 July | Dawn to Dusk
‘The White Barracks’ imagines a fictional island inhabited by girl cadets engaged in endless military drills, using allegory to examine power, patriarchy and the reproduction of ideology. Moving between fiction and documentary, Lean Lui asks what might emerge when inherited myths begin to fracture.
âš² Botanic Gardens
Padre
Marisol Mendez
4 June - 5 July | Dawn to Dusk
‘Padre’ is a personal and political excavation of masculinity through a feminist lens, rooted in family history and Latin American experience. Through staged portraits, archival interventions and symbolic gestures, Marisol Mendez traces absence, tenderness, violence and care across generations.
âš² Botanic Gardens
Descendants of Summer
Nicola Muirhead
4 June - 5 July | Dawn to Dusk
‘Descendants of Summer’ explores identity, belonging and historical reckoning in Bermuda through portraiture, landscape, archives and oral history. Rooted in personal connection and collaborative research, Nicola Muirhead examines how colonialism and slavery continue to shape the island’s present.
âš² Botanic Gardens
Thinking of a Place
Raghav Goswamy
4 June - 5 July | Dawn to Dusk
This work explores migration, memory and belonging through family history and a fragmented relationship with place. Returning to Allahabad after years away, Raghav Goswamy traces what remains of inherited journeys through photographs, objects, silences and the shifting landscapes of childhood.
âš² Botanic Gardens
The Chronicle of Us
Shunta Kimura
4 June - 5 July | Dawn to Dusk
‘The Chronicle of Us’ is part of an ongoing documentary project on human migration in the context of the climate crisis. Focusing on South Asia and the Asia-Pacific region, Shunta Kimura brings attention to the lives of people displaced by floods, rising seas and environmental breakdown.
âš² Botanic Gardens
The Lams of Ludlow Street
Thomas Holton
4 June - 5 July | Dawn to Dusk
‘The Lams of Ludlow Street’ is a long-term photographic portrait of a single Chinese American family living in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Over more than two decades, Thomas Holton has used the work to move beyond stereotype and build a deeper understanding of family, identity and belonging.
âš² Botanic Gardens
The Last Butterflies
Valentina Sinis
4 June - 5 July | Dawn to Dusk
‘The Last Butterflies’ follows female Kurdish guerrillas living and training in the mountains between Iraq and Iran, examining militancy, sacrifice and political belief. Moving beyond combat alone, Valentina Sinis looks at how armed struggle intersects with gender, truth, solidarity and survival.
âš² Botanic Gardens
The Song of Invisible Birds
Florence Goupil
4 June - 5 July | Dawn to Dusk
‘The Song of Invisible Birds’ explores the violent pressures facing Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation in the Peruvian Amazon. Refusing to photograph those who have chosen not to be seen, Florence Goupil instead traces the lands, signs and surrounding communities shaped by their presence.
âš² The MAC
Dungannon Tropicana
Dawn Richardson & Chad Alexander
24 April - 5 July | Tuesday - Sunday | 11am - 5pm
A former Irish National Foresters club in Dungannon, County Tyrone transforms into a multicultural community hub, revealing the untold stories of a town shaped by migration, identity, rumours, and chicken.
âš² QSS Studios & Gallery
TOSS
MIDDEN - Sarah Edmondson, Mary Martin and Niamh McGuinne
25 June - 25 July | Mon - Thurs 10am - 5pm
MIDDEN excavates a fictional virtual midden, combining artefacts, images, text and film to explore destructive cycles of extraction, exploitation, consumption and waste through speculative, deliberately unscientific narratives.
âš² Antrim Castle Gardens
Exploring Antrim and Newtownabbey
Evanna Devine
12 June - 2 August | Mon - Fri 9:30am - 5pm | Sat - Sun 10am - 5pm
‘Exploring Antrim and Newtownabbey’ is a year-round project unfolding across the four seasons through four commissions and a public photography competition. Beginning with Evanna Devine in spring, it invites audiences to discover the borough’s landscapes, heritage and history in fresh ways, ready for the competition launch in August 2026.
