Mapping Photography Festivals in Poland in Autumn 2025

odwrot-2_05-scaled-s.jpg, default, Tomasz Liboska, 'Retreat – Part 2', photo: FotoArt Festival

From artist residencies and solo exhibitions, to large-scale projections woven into cityscapes and events celebrating the art of analogue photography, autumn 2025 promises an exceptional season for lovers of the photographic image.

This year, festivals across Poland will offer new perspectives, international names, and explorations of themes ranging from transformation to memory, identity and urban life. Here’s how photography will shape the months ahead.

Frames of Sopot Photography Festival

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A photo from the Enchanted Waters exhibition by Dagmara Barańska-Morzy, photo: Frames of Sopot Photography Festival

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The 11th Frames of Sopot Photography Festival take place from 5th to 21st September 2025, with the central theme of ‘Transformation’. The programme rests on three pillars: exhibitions by invited artists, residency projects and student presentations.

This year, three artistic residencies were awarded through an open call competition to Dagmara Barańska-Morzy, Paweł Jaśkiewicz and Gundula Friese. The residencies took place in Sopot in May, and the resulting works are now being presented during the festival.

In Enchanted Waters, Barańska-Morzy draws inspiration from local history, creating visual maps of Sopot’s long-vanished streams, which once flowed openly through the city but are now hidden underground. Her image-maps reconstruct this absent topography, inviting reflection on humanity’s relationship with nature and the memory of place. Jaśkiewicz, influenced by the New Topographic movement, turns his lens towards non-places and disappearing waterways, exploring themes of urbanisation and human impact on the environment. Friese, formerly a photographer with Berlin’s Criminal Investigation Bureau, presents series concerned with generational memory, including Daughters, or an Essay on Time and Power of Green.

The State Art Gallery will host an exhibition by Barbara Klemm, the renowned photojournalist long associated with the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Her series Light and Dark features over 150 photographs spanning 1968 to 2008, chronicling life in Germany before and after reunification. The images capture a wide social spectrum: political protests, portraits of immigrants, cultural events, mass gatherings and urban landspaces.

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A photo from the ‘0169-8629 5223-01750’ series by Karol Szymkowiak, photo: Frames of Sopot Photography Festival

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At Goyki 3 Art Inkubator, German artist Catrin Wechler presents her series Pflanzenporträts, portraying plants in states of transition, when, as she puts it, ‘the ordinary can become extraordinary’. The Sopot Centrum space features three projects: Tomek Albin’s Colores Absentes, which translates the fascination of night photography into a studio context; Karol Szymkowiak’s works from the 0169-8629 5223-01750 series, documenting the military area around Lake Powidzkie; and a new version of Diana Lelonek’s Solarstalgia, inspired by attempts to preserve glaciers and realised using old photographic techniques such as solarigraphy and anthotype.

At the Splot Gallery, Michał Adamski’s exhibition As the Water Covers the Land sets history against questions about the future of agriculture and the ecological consequences of human activity. Meanwhile at Sierakowski Manor, Witold Węgrzyn recalls the transformations of Sopot itself – from the 1960s and the heyday of the Non Stop club and its Czerwone Gitary concerts, to contemporary images of a resort during its void-like off-season. In turn, Robert Laska’s POP Portraits revisits images of stars originally published in the magazines Machina, Viva and Playboy.

Warsaw’s Night of Photography 2025

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An event during Warsaw’s Night of Photography 2023, photo: Radek Pietruszka / PAP

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Warsaw does not yet have a photography festival in the classic format of multiple parallel exhibitions. That artistic gap is partly bridged by the event organised by the Museum of Warsaw’s Centre of Photography. Previous editions have drawn large audiences, confirming the capital’s strong appetite for photography.

This year’s Night of Photography takes place on 12th September from 6pm until 11pm across several locations in Warsaw’s Old and New Towns. The theme of the third edition is ‘City Limits / Limits within the City’, with photographic projections shown in public spaces once again forming the core of the programme. The Museum of Warsaw has curated a mix of works from its collection, projects by contemporary artists, and international partner shows.

One of the highlights is the unveiling of works by the winners of the photography competition organised specially for the festival, presented alongside projects created for the new Photography Room at the Museum of Warsaw. Artists from the Polish photography scene have also been invited to participate, including Michał Łuczak, Janek Zamoyski and Joanna Kinowska, as well as members of the Association of Polish Art Photographers – Patryk Karbowski and Maria Książek – and artists associated with the group Polish Women Photographers, such as Małgorzata Wakuluk and Paulina Holtz.

The programme also includes presentations by international artists. One key exhibition is showcasing Martin Parr, the famed British photographer, curator and photo book creator, whose influence on contemporary photography and the photography book market has been profound. The programme also features projects realised in collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery in London, and selections from Les Rencontres d’Arles, one of the most important art photography festivals in the world.

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A photo from the ‘To Do List – To Father a Son, To Build a House, To Plant a Tree’ series by Jakub Stanek, photo: Museum of Warsaw

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Projections are being located in various sites across the city: on the facades of the Barbican and Lapidarium, in Lengrenówka, at the Alina Foundation, the Sto Pociech Foundation, at the ZPAF headquarters and the Syrena cinema. By weaving the photographs into the urban fabric, the event allows the works to be viewed beyond the confines of traditional exhibition spaces.

An additional highlight is the opening of Jakub Stanek’s exhibition at Rynek 30 Gallery. Entitled To Do List – To Father a Son, To Build a House, To Plant a Tree, the series has been an ongoing project since 2017, offering a personal story about fatherhood, masculinity and the breaking down of stereotypical gender roles. The exhibition is curated by Karolina Ziębińska, director of the Museum of Warsaw.

Vintage Photo Festival in Bydgoszcz & Toruń

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A work from Piotr Zbierski’s Solid Maze exhibition, photo: Vintage Photo Festival

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This year’s Vintage Photo Festival, held in Bydgoszcz and Toruń, unfolds under the theme Intertwining, with events running from 19th September to 19th October 2025. The festival launches with a gala at the Wanda Rucińska Chamber Theatre, followed by the opening of the main exhibitions at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), part of the Leon Wyczółkowski District Museum.

Highlight exhibitions include: A Dual Gaze: Alice Springs x Helmut Newton, presented in Poland for the first time; Tomasz Tomaszewski’s retrospective The World is Where You Stop; Light and Shadow: The Legacy of the Witkiewicz Family; and Objectively Bydgoszcz, a series devoted to the city of Bydgoszcz as captured on film. The GoMA will also showcase works awarded at the 2025 Vintage Grand Prix: first place went to Agnieszka Antosiewicz-Mas for her series Background of Memory; second place to Sarah Seené for her project Radical Corollas; and third place to Joanna Borowiec for Reminiscences. Honourable Mentions were awarded to Charlotte Aeb (Metamorphosis), Eva Gjaltema (The Hunting Game), Jan Skwara (Portrait of the Past: Aghori), Juan Couder (Clepsydra) and Youssef ElNahas (Submerged City).

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An image featured at Basia Sokołowska’s Inter exhibition, photo: Vintage Photo Festival

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Additional exhibitions include Piotr Zbierski’s Solid Maze at the Bydgoszcz Art Centre, Agnieszka Stefańska’s Thread of Life at Wspólna Gallery, and Inter by Basia Sokołowska. The programme also features Pre-War Photography by Józef Żuk Piwkowski in collaboration with ZbyZiel, the Tatras series by Michał Tomaszewski at Landschaft, IN-BETWEEN at the Wozownia Art Gallery, as well as exhibitions in Toruń: Unseen Legacies: Rediscovering Lotte Jacobi and Janina Gardzielewska at the Centre of Contemporary Art Znaki Czasu, and The Jacobi Family – Pioneers of Photography in Toruń at the District Museum in Toruń.

Beyond the exhibitions, the festival offers meetings with artists (including Tomasz Tomaszewski and Anita Andrzejewska), workshops on historical techniques, the Analog Photo Bazaar, auctions, conservation workshops, photo walks, and educational activities including soil chromatography and monotyping for children. A major element is Fast Forward: Women in Photography, the first panel of its kind in Poland, scheduled for 10th to 12th October in Toruń and dedicated to the role of women in photography. All together, the festival encompasses over forty events: exhibitions, meetings, lectures and workshops in both urban and institutional settings. As such, the Vintage Photo Festival in Bydgoszcz and Toruń has become one of Poland’s largest and most significant photography events.

Foto Art Festival in Bielsko-Biała

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A photo from the series ‘The Way of Zen’ by Róbert László Bácsi, photo: Foto Art Festival

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The 11th Andrzej Batura Foto Art Festival will take place from 10th to 26th October 2025, marking the biennale’s anniversary edition – the inaugural festival took place twenty years ago. Inez Baturo serves as programme director, with the event organised by the Photography Centre Foundation and the Bielsko-Biała Gallery BWA as the main partner.

In keeping with tradition, the festival welcomes artists from a range of cultural backgrounds, including some whose work has rarely, if ever, been seen in Poland. This eclectic international line-up sets the Bielsko-Biała event apart from comparable festivals.

Sixteen solo exhibitions will be showcased by artists from sixteen European countries and the United States, with the principal presentations staged at the Bielsko-Biała Gallery BWA and Villa Sixta. Some of the highlights at BWA Gallery are Three and a Half Decades of the Institute of Creative Photography of the Silesian University in Opava, Michael Christopher Brown’s 90 Miles, and Ian Weldon’s I Am Not a Wedding Photographer. Villa Sixta is hosting exhibitions by the likes of Róbert László Bácsi (The Way of Zen), Hervé Chatel (Somewhere in Brittany: From Land to Sea Under at 1015 hPa), Damian Lemański (Kids of Lunik IX), Tomasz Liboska (Turn Round – Part 2) and Iren Moroz (After God – Only the Kitchen).

A programme highlight is the Authors’ Marathon, taking place 11th and 12th October. This event offers audiences the chance to meet exhibiting artists, hear their presentations, and gain insight into their creative processes. Further accompanying events include Dias Show (photography shows blending image, music and narrative), the Trampoline portfolio review, and the FotoOpen competition, which welcomes entries from both professionals and amateurs.

Originally written in Polish, translated by Michał Pelczar, Sept 2025

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