History
2024 – Commonplaces
The Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography concludes its 27th edition on an exceptional note. This year, more than 13’000 visitors attended the festival, demonstrating the quality of the 23 exhibitions on the theme “Commonplaces”, including 9 world premieres. In the era where it has become easy to make images say almost anything, the festival had the boldness to invite 20 Swiss and international artists and art collectives that observe daily life, the banal and the ordinary, as a means to document it with acuity and rigor: these looks, for the most part documentary, attest to the richness of contemporary photographical practices and have the ability to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary through images.
2023 – Physicalities
The Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography concludes its 26th edition on a very positive note. Similarly to last year, more than 11’000 visitors enjoyed, for three weeks, 20 exhibitions and events on the theme “Physicalities”, including 10 world premieres. Fans of the festival are also increasingly following us online. Various projects and 21 Swiss and international artists have explored the image practice as a tool for reflecting on what “forms a body” in our society, in the era where the border between real and virtual worlds is more and more blurry: a contemporary and relevant theme that interrogates our relationship to images.
2022 – Recover
The Biel/Bienne Festival of Photography concludes its 25th edition on a very positive note. More than 11,000 visitors enjoyed the 21 exhibitions and projects, presented this year under the title “Recover.” For this anniversary edition, the festival examined the practice of the image as a tool for repairing the frayed or even broken relationship of the individual with the contemporary world: a photographic stroll that offered a poetic reflection on sometimes serious problems. The course of exhibitions presented a consideration of the weight of cultural heritage; some works aspired to restore the feeling of belonging to a community, real or virtual, others to rewrite a history. Thanks to its many partnerships, the festival was able to show the diversity of contemporary Swiss and international photographic practice, in 11 venues across the city of Biel/Bienne.
In 2020, an archiving project was undertaken in collaboration with the archives of the city of Biel/Bienne. In 2022, the festival launched a new internet site, which is reinforcing the festival’s presence by upgrading its archives and making them more accessible.
1997-2021
Please refer to the french or german part of the website.
Thank you!
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Editions
2021 Cracks
2019 Flood
2018 Happy
2017 Extrême
2016 Permis de construire 2015 Adaptation
2015 Adaptation
2014 Hybride
2013 Wendepunkte
2012 Voir et être vu
2011 Le temps fait son œuvre
2010 Kollateral
2009 Bande à part
2008 Make believe
2007 Non-lieu
2006 Retour sur la physionomie
2005 On the road… again
2004 C’est la vie.
2003 Spuren
2002 Strates de l’éphémère
2001 Paysage(s), la nature des choses 2000 Objectif Subjectif
1999 Lorsque les images s’arrêtent… 1998 Sud et migration
1997 Journées photographiques