Program 2026
Photo Talks & Projector Program
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Rotterdam Photo 2026
Location: Fenix Plein
Discover the personal, political, and emotional power of photography at Rotterdam Photo 2026. This year’s edition, “Echoes of Silence – War in the Artist’s Soul,” explores memory, identity, and resilience through immersive screenings and thought-provoking artist talks. Join us at Fenix Plein to experience stories that transform private experiences into a shared visual language.
Saturday, March 28
Traces of Silence (Projector Screening)
11:30 – 12:30 | Location: Fenix Plein
This screening focuses on intimate and personal experiences of identity, memory, and resilience. Works explore personal histories shaped by adoption, familial inheritance, marginalized communities, and the trauma of war, reflecting how collective and individual narratives carry traces of absence, loss, and survival.
– Padre, Marisol Mendez – Feminist exploration of masculinity in Latin America, showing how masculinity is transmitted, performed, and deconstructed.
– Perles d’Ukraine, Anaïs Oudart – Highlights sexual violence as a weapon of war, examining women’s bodies as contested spaces in Ukraine.
– Under The Same Sun, Asafe Ghalib – After a decade apart from his religious family and home, photographer Asafe Ghalib returns to Rio de Janeiro. Using his lens, he traces personal displacement and return while documenting Latin American LGBTQIA+ migration to major cities in search of safety, belonging and opportunity.
– Kaliama, Bimal Fabbri – Revisits personal history shaped by transnational adoption, memory, and reconnection with his childhood village in Nepal.
Talk 1: How can personal wounds become collective experiences?
13:00 – 14:30 | Location: Fenix Plein
Speakers: Roger Anis (A Blessed Marriage), Sveta Kaverina (The Three of Us), Émeric Lhuisset
Moderator: Natalie K. Haigh
This session explores how deeply personal experiences intersect with social, political, and ideological structures. Artists will discuss how intimate stories—of love, family, identity, and memory—can reveal broader cultural and political forces:
– Roger Anis examines marriage and divorce under Egypt’s legal and religious restrictions, reflecting on personal archives to explore love, transformation, and resilience.
– Sveta Kaverina uses a fictional story of cloned girls to explore identity, displacement, and the enduring influence of political and ideological systems.
– Émeric Lhuisset discusses the mediation of war photography, highlighting how images of conflict are produced, circulated, and consumed.
The talk will address questions such as: How can private experiences be transformed into collective understanding? How do personal archives and fictionalized stories make visible what is usually silenced? How can photography bridge the gap between private pain and public awareness?
Constructed Realities (Projector Screening)
15:00 – 16:00 | Location: Fenix Plein
This screening explores how humans shape, inhabit, and imagine physical and social spaces. Projects range from survival architecture to fictional cities, urban identity, and responses to systemic violence.
– Cold Comfort, Alastair Philip Wiper – Architecture built to delay disaster and confront mortality.
– Miami, Not the Beach, Antoine Martin – Urban landscapes of Miami-Dade beyond its tourist image.
– Agloe, NY, Henri Kisielewski – A fictional city realized through photography, archival material, and interviews.
– Adél Koleszár – Only Have Faith – Women uncovering mass graves in Veracruz, Mexico, as an act of remembrance and justice.
Sunday, March 29
Constructed Realities (Projector Screening)
11:30 – 12:30 | Location: Fenix Plein
This screening explores how humans shape, inhabit, and imagine physical and social spaces. Projects range from survival architecture to fictional cities, urban identity, and responses to systemic violence.
– Cold Comfort, Alastair Philip Wiper – Architecture built to delay disaster and confront mortality.
– Miami, Not the Beach, Antoine Martin – Urban landscapes of Miami-Dade beyond its tourist image.
– Agloe, NY, Henri Kisielewski – A fictional city realized through photography, archival material, and interviews.
– Adél Koleszár – Only Have Faith – Women uncovering mass graves in Veracruz, Mexico, as an act of remembrance and justice.
Talk 2: Is Photographing an Act of Understanding or an Act of Caring?
13:00 – 14:30 | Location: Fenix Plein
Speakers: Malek Bigum (Even the Rain is Warm), Andrea Bonderup (Generational Gratitude), Maryam Touzani (How to Tame a Wild Tongue)
Moderator: Cecile Van Bruggen
This discussion examines photography as a means to navigate inherited histories, personal and collective memory, and fragile stories. It considers photography both as a way to understand oneself and as an act of care toward stories that predate the photographer:
– Malek Bigum explores identity shaped by displacement and cultural inheritance, reflecting on belonging and the experience of growing up between cultures.
– Andrea Bonderup examines acts of care and solidarity across generations, considering how memory, gratitude, and emotional responsibility endure after conflict.
– Maryam Touzani explores the loss of ancestral language and cultural erasure, turning silence and fragmentation into a counter-archive of survival.
The talk will address questions including: What do we inherit, and what do we choose to carry? How do memory, home, and body become emotional and social spaces? How can photography turn private reflection into a shared visual language? How do inherited and personal wounds resonate collectively?
Traces of Silence (Projector Screening)
15:00 – 16:00 | Location:Fenix Plein
This screening focuses on intimate and personal experiences of identity, memory, and resilience. Works explore personal histories shaped by adoption, familial inheritance, marginalized communities, and the trauma of war, reflecting how collective and individual narratives carry traces of absence, loss, and survival.
– Padre, Marisol Mendez – Feminist exploration of masculinity in Latin America, showing how masculinity is transmitted, performed, and deconstructed.
– Perles d’Ukraine, Anaïs Oudart – Highlights sexual violence as a weapon of war, examining women’s bodies as contested spaces in Ukraine.
– Under The Same Sun, Asafe Ghalib – After a decade apart from his religious family and home, photographer Asafe Ghalib returns to Rio de Janeiro. Using his lens, he traces personal displacement and return while documenting Latin American LGBTQIA+ migration to major cities in search of safety, belonging and opportunity.
– Kaliama, Bimal Fabbri – Revisits personal history shaped by transnational adoption, memory, and reconnection with his childhood village in Nepal.