Festival Images 2014: Switzerland

Festival Images is Switzerland’s first open‐air photography festival for visual arts and the main festival of its kind in Europe. Every two years it produces unprecedented monumental photography exhibitions in the streets of Vevey; it also offers many exhibitions in various venues throughout the region devoted to image and displays the winning work from the competitions that it organises: the International Photography Award.

From September 13th to October 5th, the Festival Images will present the work of more than 65 artists coming from 15 countries in Vevey – indoor and outdoor. Amongst them, international figures such as Francis Alÿs, John Baldessari, Martha Cooper, Leandro Erlich, Lee Friedlander, Paul Fusco, Arno Rafael Minkkinen and Alex Prager. The Festival specialises in enormous, open‐air installations, and continually finds new and surprising ways of presenting the works. Whether inside or outside, most of the Festival’s images are made‐to‐measure, pushing the usual limits of photography. This year, some 70 projects with artists from 18 countries will reflect the town’s appetite for the visual arts. The program mixes local, national and international works. The aim is always to create meaning in an urban context, and to surprise both locals and visitors with a new way of reading the town. The Festival Images is an opportunity for Vevey to prove its credentials as a laboratory of innovation and ideas.

Image © Tadao Cern

Festival Images stands out from other similar events for several reasons. Firstly, rather than purely presenting existing series, it collaborates with the artists to present exclusive projects tailor‐made by and for the Festival. In the same vein, it also explores ways of reinterpreting existing works and presenting them in public areas, often in a monumental format. Favouring interaction, it promises visitors a real photographic experience in a big way! The images In the programme have a strong potential for narrative that prevails over their documentary dimension. A common thread, ‘Mirrors, reflections and pretence,’ runs through the 2014 Festival programme. The exhibitions cover other themes too: ‘found photography’ or the return of vernacular photography, photography and literature, image reproduction rights and video monitoring, war photography and new reportage or photography in the Internet age. These perspectives are essential to thoroughly grasp the Festival Images 2014 programme.