Rotterdam Photo 2026

Rotterdam Photo 2026, the international photography festival taking place during Rotterdam Art Week, returns to Deliplein from 25 to 29 March 2026. Together with Unseen at Ahoy and the Photobookmarket at the Nederlands Fotomuseum, the festival forms a city-wide photography hub, positioning Rotterdam as a focal point for contemporary photography during the art week. This year’s edition, Echoes of Silence – War in the Artist’s Soul, brings together artists from around the world to reflect on how conflict, tension, and trauma resonate within individuals' inner lives.

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ECHOES oF SILENCE – WAR IN THE ARTIST’S SOUL

What does conflict do to an artist who is not an eyewitness, but a bearer of its emotional resonance? How does violence - geopolitical, social, environmental, or deeply personal - echo in the minds of those who survive, flee, inherit, imagine, or simply sense it from afar?

With Echoes of Silence, Rotterdam Photo 2026 explores how war, tension, and both collective and intimate trauma reverberate in photographic practices that turn inward. At a time when images of crisis circulate endlessly through media and screens, the festival calls for another approach: introspective, subjective, and visually layered perspectives on conflict in all its forms.

This edition is not a platform for reportage or the direct registration of violence. Instead, it foregrounds autonomous photographic work that departs from personal resonance, psychological processing, and symbolic representation. Conflict is approached not as a spectacle, but as a condition - something that may unfold in memory, family history, migration experiences, ecological change, cultural tension, or quiet personal unrest. The lens does not capture the explosion, but its echo: silence, emptiness, repetition, fragmentation, friction, or transformation.

Rotterdam Photo 2026 makes space for artists for whom conflict may be visible or invisible, distant or intimate, historical or ongoing, collective or deeply individual. Whether rooted in war, displacement, identity struggles, environmental upheaval, intergenerational trauma, social injustice, or internal change, the festival values layered experiences over singular narratives.

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INVITED PHOTOGRAPHERS

Rotterdam Photo 2026 presents four invited artists whose work resonates strongly with the festival’s theme:

Caroline Monnet - A multidisciplinary artist of Anishinaabe and French descent (Canada), whose work challenges colonial and patriarchal narratives while reclaiming Indigenous presence in contemporary visual culture.

Diego Moreno - A visual artist working between Mexico and Switzerland, combining photography, text, and mixed media to explore identity, religion, violence, and family through narrative-driven projects.

Hashim Nasr - A self-taught artist from Sudan/Egypt whose surreal and conceptual photography reflects on memory, heritage, exile, and emotional displacement.

Otto Snoek - A Rotterdam-based documentary photographer (b.1966) known for his radical aesthetics and slow journalism approach, capturing dense, layered scenes that mirror the contradictions and social dynamics of contemporary Western society.

Together, these artists offer distinct perspectives on memory, identity, and the psychological landscapes shaped by conflict.

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Location: Deliplein, Rotterdam, Festival context: Rotterdam Art Week

About Rotterdam Photo: Rotterdam Photo is an annual international photography festival that brings together emerging and established artists in an accessible and dynamic setting. By combining exhibitions with talks, music, and public programming, the festival creates space for dialogue, experimentation, and new ways of engaging with contemporary photography.

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