HIGHLIGHTS
Over 10 previous editions, Belfast Photo Festival has developed expertise, relationships, momentum and vision on what, how and where it curates and presents work within Belfast. The organisation has proven its ability to celebrate contemporary photography in the city whilst attracting and engaging national and international audiences through a diverse programme of participation, development, exhibitions and events.
© Richard Mosse.
© Matthias Oostrik.
In 2024, The Joseph Rowntree Climate Storytellers’ Fund enabled the Island of Ireland premiere of Richard Mosse’s Broken Spectre within Carlisle Memorial Church. A vast and immersive 74-minute audio-visual installation, without entry fee, took audiences deep into the Brazilian Amazon - seeking to overcome the challenge of representing climate change. The exhibition was supported by a live panel event and highly successful campaign that reached an audience of over 115M.
The same year Riddel’s Warehouse, one of the most remarkable examples of 19th century industrial Belfast, hosted SMILE AI by Dutch artist Matthias Oostrik. Presented at the festival with the support of the Creative Industries Fund NL, Kingdom of the Netherlands and Hearth Historic Buildings Trust, this dystopian art installation actively immersed the audience in a future where reality is refracted through the lens of AI's statistical interpretations.
Watch as Richard Mosse discusses his most ambitious project to date & Island of Ireland premiere - Broken Spectre.
© Hannah Starkey.
© Saype.
2022 marked 25 years since the Good Friday / Belfast Agreement, in reaction to this in 2023 the Festival presented a newly commissioned body of work by renowned Northern Irish photographer Hannah Starkey. Principled and Revolutionary: Northern Ireland’s Peace Women honours and celebrates the women who helped bring peace to Northern Ireland. An iteration of the exhibition will be on show as part of a major exhibition on activist feminist practice at the South London Gallery in collaboration with the V&A, launching in March 2024 to celebrate International Women’s Day.
Starkey’s artwork aims to ignite a conversation about the impact and importance of women’s leadership, not just here in Belfast, but globally. The 21 portraits in the exhibition highlight some of the many women who have been pivotal to peace building and community activism in this country through their work in both the political, cultural and social spheres. Through exploring these, too often untold, stories, we hope to shine a light on the legacies and impact of women's activism here in Belfast and to inspire younger generations of women to make their voices heard.
In 2022 the festival commissioned Swiss-based French graffiti artist Saype’s to bring his worldwide Beyond Walls Project and extend its symbolic human links to Northern Ireland. The gigantic, biodegradable lawn fresco of intertwined hands was displayed at the Stormont Estate. The artwork is extended over an area of 45 by 240 metres. Created using pigments made of charcoal and chalk, the artwork will fade away with the growth of the grass. The hands of people from Belfast are the photographic base of the artworks, advocating solidarity, dialogue and friendship beyond geographical and societal constraints.
© Simon Norfolk & Klaus Thymann.
© Quentin Lacombe.
In 2022, Belfast Photo Festival presented an immersive installation at Riddel’s Warehouse, a historic ironmongery store. Shroud by Simon Norfolk and Klaus Thymann transported audiences into an arctic-like environment, blending imagery, sound, theatrical lighting, and fog to depict the tragic decline of a glacier now wrapped in thermal blankets to guard against global warming.
Also in 2022, Quentin Lacombe's Event Horizon transformed a vacant city centre building into a futuristic landscape, immersing visitors in a visionary, experiential world.
© Zanele Muholi.
© Alicja Wróblewska.
Zanele Muholi’s Somnyama Ngonyama was first exhibited in 2021 as part of Belfast Photo Festival at Queen’s University Belfast. Following this, it toured to the University of Glasgow, supported by Belfast Photo Festival in partnership with Street Level Photoworks and The Hunterian. For Muholi, visual activism is a tool for world-building:
"This work is done to ensure that the next generation will be able to draw on a diverse – and queer – archive of images for visual reference: a document to see themselves in and feel represented."
Artist: Zanele Muholi
In the same year, Alicja Wróblewska’s vivid but shocking renderings of plastic coral reefs are exhibited at large scale throughout Belfast’s main shopping district, Victoria Square. Co-opting the visual language of advertising, Wróblewska’s works both highlight the troubling fact that an estimated 90 percent of the world’s reefs will be under threat by the end of this decade, while forcing us to confront our own culpability through our consumption of plastics.
© Arno Rafael Minkkinen.
© Erik Kessels & Thomas Mailaender.
In 2019, Arno Rafael Minkkinen’s large-scale building wrap, From the Shelton, Looking East (hands opening buildings, New York), was exhibited in Belfast city centre. The Shelton Hotel, once New York’s tallest skyscraper, is famed for being the home of Alfred Stieglitz and Georgia O’Keeffe. In 2005, Minkkinen rented a room just below their former studio to capture the same iconic views, though the city’s towering skyline had since obscured the scene.
That same year, the interactive installation Jump Trump was launched during controversial US President Trump’s first visit to Ireland. Hosted at Golden Thread Gallery, visitors jumped from a raised platform onto an inflatable mat featuring the president’s image. Organic press was confirmed at 24 Million by J Comms Agency in Belfast as part of the wider festival’s Monitoring and Evaluation.
© Cyril Hatt.
© MAC Belfast.
In 2015, Belfast City Hall was brought to a standstill as a convoy of DeLorean DMC-12 cars marked the opening of the Belfast Photo Festival. Crowds gathered to photograph the iconic vehicles, made famous by the Back to the Future trilogy, coinciding with the unveiling of a signature event of the festival: The DeLorean Print Project.
This 3D photographic sculpture celebrated the 35th anniversary of the DeLorean's first pre-production. Created by French artist Cyril Hatt in collaboration with local artist Robert Anderson and Scottish woodworker Jonathan Hickey, the project fused sculpture and photography. Each section of the replica car was carefully photographed and printed on A5 aluminium plates, which were then affixed to a wooden frame, recreating the iconic car. Former employees of the Dunmurry factory, where the DeLorean was produced, reunited to sign the photographs, adding a nostalgic touch.
That year, the festival also co-presented Northern Ireland: 30 Years of Photography, an ambitious exhibition featuring nearly 200 works in The MAC Belfast. This collection showcased a distinctive body of photographic work from the 1980s onwards, highlighting fine-art documentary practices designed for gallery spaces and photo-books, created by both local and international photographers.