Alliance, Infinity, Love – in the Face of the Other

 »Alliance, Infinity, Love – in the Face of the Other« presents around 30 artistic positions spanning photography, video, and film, recounting stories rooted in a wide range of places and cultural experiences—from Australia and Japan to Lebanon and Palestine, from Brazil and Jamaica to South Africa, Brussels or London, and Greenland. The artists form a transglobal community, exploring new forms of experience and sharing. Their works reflect personal stories, emotional states, and socio-political entanglements. Thematically, they revolve around questions of identity, liberation, and community; visibility and invisibility; spirituality and pain; desire and intimacy and, throughout, the transformative power of love and artistic creativity.

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The exhibition narrative weaves the guiding concepts of Alliance, Infinity, and Love into a dynamic, spatial sequence in which they flow seamlessly into one another. The chapter “Alliance” foregrounds the power of coexistence and the recognition of difference. In this context, the artists Derik Lynch and Matthew Thorne come together to create a hybrid cultural fusion. In doing so, they transform our understanding of Indigenous knowledge—not as something fixed, but as something that is continuously evolving and open to interpretation. Rotimi Fani–Kayode and Alex Hirst, in turn, created in the 1980s a body of photographic work merging Yoruba traditions with European modernity a radical alliance that challenged what Fani-Kayode described as “Traces of Ecstasy”.“Infinity” addresses the boundless possibilities of human becoming, envisioning a world without restrictive borders, where silenced or marginalised voices can enter into the shared fabric of visual culture and daily life.

Hélène Amouzou and Sandra Brewster—two of the artists presented here whose practices resist any form of fixation—succeed in representing the Black subject as being unlocatable in time yet present in space. In this way, we can begin to understand that subjectivity is constantly in flux.In the chapter “Love”, Mao Ishikawa reminds us of what it means to love across difference, and of how, in circumstances of isolation, dislocation, and rejection, love and desire as dynamic forces bind people together. In this, the artist like Tyler Mitchell embraces photography as a practice of community, empathy, and reparation. Sensual in tone and atmosphere, Mitchell’s works build a highly constructed sphere of tenderness and intimacy, allowing the Black body to exist in a world in which fear is, at least temporarily, suspended in favour of joy.

‍Artists included

‍»Alliance, Infinity, Love – in the Face of the Other« presents about 500 works by Hélène Amouzou, Dawoud Bey, Sandra Brewster, Jasmina Cibic, Mario Cravo Neto, Arlene Gottfried, Eikoh Hosoe and Yukio Mishima, Mao Ishikawa, Lee Jaffe, Sakir Khader, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Didier Ben Loulou, Randa Mirza, Mónica de Miranda, Tyler Mitchell, Naeem Mohaiemen, Ebony G. Patterson, Raphaela Rosella, Lindokuhle Sobekwa, Lee Shulman and Omar Victor Diop, Inuuteq Storch, Chuck Stewart, Matthew Thorne and Derik Lynch, Stephanie Syjuco, and Nil Yalter, among others.The exhibition is part of the 9th Triennial of Photography Hamburg, taking place from 5 June to 22 September 2026 under the title “Alliance, Infinity, Love – in the Face of the Other.” Across eight museums and exhibition venues in the city, it brings together eleven exhibitions. Further information: 2026.phototriennale.de