Jean Mohr (1925–2018, CH) was a major Swiss photographer and a key figure in postwar humanist documentary photography. Trained in the social sciences, he turned to photography in the 1950s and produced numerous reportages on migration, conflicts, and the living conditions of marginalized populations, particularly in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. His work is distinguished by an empathetic approach, attentive to relationships with the people he photographed and to the long-term nature of his investigations. His books and exhibitions have profoundly shaped the history of the European photo-essay.
Angela Marzullo (*1971, CH) is an artist born in Zurich, Switzerland. She has been living in Geneva since she graduated from the Haute Ecole d’Art et de Design, Genève (HEAD) in 2004. She combines video and performance art in order to explore the feminist questions. In 2010 she was awarded a residency at the Swiss Institute in Rome. Since 2003, she has practiced critical artistic transmission through her work. She has exhibited at numerous venues in Switzerland and abroad, including the Centre de la Photographie in Geneva in 2017.
Concours FNS d’images scientifiques.
SNF-Wettbewerb für wissenschaftliche Bilder.
SNSF Scientific Image Competition.
The Archive of Public Protests (APP) is a semi-open platform for distributing images connected with social and political tensions in Poland from 2015 until now.
This Archive tends to bring together visuals and records of social activism and grassroots movements challenging political decisions as well as violations of democratic principles and human rights.
Founded in 1998, Le Temps brings together the legacies of three major newspapers of French-speaking Switzerland: the Gazette de Lausanne (1788), the Journal de Genève (1826) and the Nouveau Quotidien (1991). This lineage situates the newspaper within more than two centuries of press history, shaped by evolving editorial forms, regimes of visibility and ways of narrating current events.
Organized as an association, Purple Eye is a collaborative platform that aims to increase the public visibility of each of its members. With feminist convictions and values such as sisterhood, exchange, and solidarity rather than competition, the Purple Eye collective seeks to overcome the difficulties women* face in accessing a professional market. When it was created during the 2019 feminist strike, the collective, then called Frauenstreikfotografinnen*, had 35 members. Since then, its membership has been growing steadily.
*We write photographers* and women* with an asterisk to show that women and non-binary people are involved in Purple Eye.
Søren Berner (*1977, DK) is a Zurich-based artist working performatively with sculpture, installation art, photography and screen printing. Often developed in situ, his projects respond to specific exhibition contexts and use participatory formats to explore the social structures shaping everyday life. Alongside his artistic practice, he researches over-identification; a recent contribution appeared in The Elgar Companion to Management Education and the Sustainable Development Goals (2026). He has exhibited at the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Cabaret Voltaire, the Helmhaus Zürich, the SMK Copenhagen and the MAK Vienna.
Enrique Muñoz García (*1969, CL/CH) is a Chilean-Swiss artist, photographer, curator, educator, and visual researcher whose practice revolves around an archive of more than 30,000 found photographs. His work has been shown internationally, including at the Leica Galerie Switzerland and the Biennale di Venezia, and Photomonth Krakow, and has been awarded many international prizes. As a curator, he is co-founder of Artspace Lokal-int (2006), founder of Artspace Juraplatz (2010) and founder of the Biel/Bienne Video Festival (2024). His curatorial projects also include Women with Binoculars, realized in collaboration with Magnum Photos and featuring Martin Parr, Alex Webb, and Mark Power, among others.
Julie Bourges (*1981, FR) is a photographer based between Rennes and Paris. She creates introspective series and photographic tales exploring memory, ancestral ties, and women of the sea. Winner of the Grande commande photographique (BNF, 2022), the Fondation des Treilles Residency Prize (2023), and the Eurazeo Prize, special mention (2024), she has exhibited Umbra, Les corps absents, and Les eaux‑fortes in France and internationally.
Laetitia Gessler (*1985, CH) graduated from the Centre d’enseignement professionnel de Vevey (CEPV), Vevey, where she obtained a CFC in photography. She also graduated from the Haute école d’art et design (HEAD), Geneva, where she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in media art. She works as a freelance photographer for cultural and public institutions such as the Berne Archives, the Fondation de l’Hermitage, and various architectural firms. At the same time, she teaches practical photography at the CEPV. Her artistic approach revolves around questions of authenticity and the reproduction of reality.
Sabine Hess (*1994, CH/DE) graduated in 2022 from the London College of Communication, UAL. She has experience in editorial and portraiture photography. Her work appeared in magazines such as M le Magazine du Monde, Il Foglio, Konfekt, and more. Her first book You Felt the Roots Grow was shortlisted for the Star Photobook Dummy Award and was published by Ciao Press and Witty Books in 2023.
Nicolas Polli (*1989, CH) is a photographer, graphic designer and teacher who enjoys shifting between personal and commercial matters. He studied Art Direction at the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL), where he currently teaches in both the BA in Visual Communication and the MA in Photography. In 2018 Nicolas Polli founded his own publishing playground CIAO Press.
Monique Jacot (1934–2024, CH) was a major Swiss documentary photographer. Trained in Vevey, she developed, from the 1960s onward, a committed body of work focussing on the world of labour, women, and social transformations in Switzerland, particularly in the watchmaking industry and the working-class environments.
Her gaze, both empathetic and precise, is rooted in a tradition of social photography attentive to people and their living conditions. Her work has been shown at numerous exhibitions, and at several photography festivals and institutions across Switzerland.
Lester Kielstein (*2002, DE) is a Lausanne-based photographer whose documentary work combines long-form field research with careful visual sequencing. Working across books and exhibitions, he uses photography as a mode of inquiry into how images shape public understanding—particularly around questions of power, visibility, and political discourse. His recent work has focussed on the shifting terrains of migration, far-right mobilisation, and collective protest movements. In 2025, Kielstein received his BA in Photography from the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL).
Since 2015, LUNAX has been both a photographers’ collective and an image agency composed of eighteen independent members. It brings together different generations, experiences, and perspectives — from established professionals to emerging photographers. Members work across documentary, media, and applied photography, combining independent projects with commissioned work for media outlets, communication agencies, public institutions, and cultural initiatives.
Since 2021, climate, environmental issues, and social responsibility have formed a central focus of the collective’s shared work. LUNAX understands itself not only as an organisational structure, but as a social and political practice in which responsibility is shared, authorship is continuously renegotiated, and long-term collaboration is actively cultivated.
Klaus Petrus (*1967, CH), a former professor of philosophy at the University of Bern, has worked as a photojournalist and reporter from 2012 onwards and co-edits the street magazine Surprise. His work focuses on poverty, exclusion, migration and conflicts in Switzerland, the Balkans, the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. His images have appeared in NZZ am Sonntag, WOZ, Tages-Anzeiger, FAZ and Süddeutsche Zeitung. He received the Swiss Press Photo Award in 2022 and 2023. His book Spuren der Flucht (2025) was widely recognised and awarded at the German Photobook Award. His work has also been featured in interviews on SRF and in Swiss newspapers.
Dominic Nahr (*1983, CH) was born in Appenzell and grew up in Hong Kong. He now lives and works in Zurich Switzerland. He studied photography at Ryerson University in Toronto and began his career in Nairobi, Kenya. His work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including Les Rencontres d’Arles, Visa pour l’Image, NRW-Forum Düsseldorf, and Fotostiftung Schweiz, and is held in permanent collections including the National Gallery of Art and FotostiftungSchweiz. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Leica Oskar Barnack Newcomer Award (2009), a World Press Photo Award (2012), the Swiss Press Photographer of the Year in 2024 and the Stern Prize for Photo Reportage of the Year in 2025.
The Ecole d’Arts Visuels Berne et Bienne / Schule für Gestaltung Bern und Biel is a major public centre of expertise for visual arts and design, located on the Bern and Biel campuses. It offers a wide range of preparatory, basic and continuing education programmes in art, photography, graphic design, product design and crafts, as well as a bilingual (French–German) foundation year in Visual Arts / Art and Design preparing students for higher studies in art schools.
Solène Gün (*1996, FR/KURD) is an artist based in Paris and works with photography and film. She studied photography at the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne (ECAL). She is a laureate of Foam Talent 2021; the Swiss Design Awards, 2019 and the Photoforum Prize 2018. In her work, identity becomes the means of an intimate connection to the rich cultural fabric of her surroundings. Whether collaborating with luxury brands or exhibiting internationally as she did with Foam and Coalmine Raum für Fotografie, her poetic sensibility remains unassumingly present.
Michel François (*1956, BE) lives and works in Brussels. Trained at La Cambre, he gained early international recognition, participating in Documenta IX in 1992 and representing Belgium at the Venice Biennale in 1999 with Ann Veronica Janssens. Since the 1980s, he has developed a multidisciplinary practice spanning sculpture, photography, installation art and video, exploring transformation, material instability, and the fragile balance between creation and destruction.
Rafał Milach (*1978, PL) is a visual artist, photographer, artivist, and educator, who joined Magnum Photo in 2023. His work focuses on the tension between society and power structures. He is a professor at the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School of the Silesian University in Katowice, Poland. He has been awarded the Dr. Erich Salomon Award and the World Press Photo prize. He is the co-founder of the Archive of Public Protests and Sputnik Photos collectives. His work hasbeen exhibited and is currently held in public institutional collections worldwide.
Annette Boutellier (*1966, CH) is a freelance documentary and portrait photographer based in Berne. She worked as an assistant to Balthasar Burkhard, andcompleted a course in reportage photography at the MAZ Media Training Center in Lucerne. Her photographic work focusses on encounters with people and on exploring personal stories. She is a member and co-founder of LUNAX collective and a member of the Purple Eye collective.
Taysir Batniji (*1966, FR/PS–GZ) graduated in arts from Al-Najah University in Nablus, Palestine (1994), and from the Bourges School of Fine Arts in France (1997). Until 2006, he divided his time between France and Palestine, two countries and two cultures, from where he developed a multimedia practice, including drawing, installation art, photography, video and performance. In 2017, he was selected as the winner of the Immersion program, a photography commission by the Hermès Foundation (Paris) in collaboration with the Aperture Foundation (New York), and in 2018, he exhibited his project Gaza to America, Home Away from Home, at the Rencontres de la Photographie Arles. In collaboration with: Sfeir Semler Gallery Beirut/Hamburg.
Daniel Rihs (*1966, CH) is a professional photographer for magazines, companies and NGOs. He holds a diploma in press photography (MAZ Lucerne, 2000) and a CAS in Theory and History of Photography (University of Zurich, 2024). In 2016, he won a Swiss Press Photo Award for the best Swiss story. He has been nominated twice for the Prix Photoforum Biel/Bienne (2016 and 2018) and, in 2023, was awarded a Canton of Berne travel grant for Tomato Travels.
Khashayar Javanmardi (*1991, IR) is an artist and documentary photographer based in Lausanne, whose work examines the intertwined relationships between nature, culture, and identity. He studied art and architecture at Guilan University in Iran and completed his studies in 2020 at The Danish Media and Journalism School (DMJX) with a photojournalism degree. He is now a member of near, the Swiss association for contemporary photography. For three consecutive years, he has been recognized as one of Iran’s most talented young photographers. In 2023, he was nominated for the Prix Elysée.
Aude Mayer (*2000, CH) is a photographer based in Lausanne. She graduated in 2024 and completed a Federal Certificate of Competence in photography, as well as a diploma at the Centre d’enseignement professionnel de Vevey (CEPV). Her work can be defined as a detailed and poetic observation of her surroundings.
Founded in 1883, Impressum is the leading professional association of journalists in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It defends press freedom and the professional rights of over 3,000 members, contributes to better working conditions, and offers legal advice, continuing education, and a professional register. It also represents the profession before the authorities and the public.
Christina Hemauer (*1973, CH) and Roman Keller (*1969, CH) are a Swiss artist duo who have been working together since 2003. Hemauer / Keller use a wide range of artistic media and practices in their art, ranging from photography and video to installations and performances. Much of their work reflects on the important role that fossil fuels play in everyday life, geopolitics and culture. For the International Art Biennale in Cairo in 2008, they created the multi-part work “No1 Sun Engine” about the world’s first thermal solar power plant, in which they examine forgotten innovations, missed opportunities and unused alternatives.
Le Temps is a French-language Swiss media outlet with national coverage. It covers a wide range of topics, including economics, culture, politics and new technologies. It offers investigative reports, feature articles and continuous news coverage. The successor to the Journal de Genève, founded in 1826, Le Temps has a history spanning two centuries of journalism.
From newspapers to events, via a variety of formats such as modular articles, videos and podcasts, Le Temps disseminates information across different media and in a range of formats.
www.letemps.ch
https://www.residenz-au-lac.ch/?lang=fr
2026 – Vulnerabilities
_ Vulnerability as a Commons
_ La vulnérabilité comme bien commun
_ Verletzlichkeit als Gemeingut
An artistic and political reflection on care, bodies, and community.
How can an image touch, resist, heal?
The 2026 edition of the festival places vulnerability at its core — not as an individual weakness, but as a shared social and political condition: a common good. In a world shaped by multiple crises, the Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography brings together photographic practices that do more than document reality. These works create connections, revealoften unseen or marginalised experiences, and open spaces of attention, care, and sensitivity.
The programme unfolds across four main thematic axes:
– feminisms and body politics,
– affective ecologies and relationships with the living world,
– narratives of migration and hospitality,
– reparative artistic gestures, in which images become spaces of care, memory, resistance, and visual justice.
Through collaborative practices, critically engaged images, reappropriated archives, and forms of gentle resistance, audiences are invited to compose their own paths and narratives, without a prescribed route.
Each exhibition venue becomes a critical space for reflection, focusing on one of these questions and fostering dialogue between artworks, contexts, and publics. The festival brings together renowned Swiss and international artists, emerging voices, collectives, researchers, and activists whose work explores the social functions of images, their sensorypower, and their critical potential.
Images, we know, are not limited to documenting pain or injustice. They can also connect, comfort, and repair. In this sense, photography becomes a space of care, resistance, and the reconfiguration of the sensorial — a place where shared thinking, feeling, and action can emerge.
