Zagreb’s Organ Vida International Photography Festival opens today

The 8th Organ Vida International Photography Festival opens today, bringing an array of exhibitions, lectures, discussions and other entertainment to the Croatian capital, Zagreb.

The largest festival of contemporary photography in southeastern Europe, Organ Vida brings together young photographers from around the world, with the aim to both advance the practice of contemporary photography and facilitate discussions about crucial socio-political issues. Each year Organ Vida holds an open call centering on a particular issue, with the festival this year taking on the theme of “Revelations”.

From more than 400 submissions from 58 countries, the Organ Vida jury has selected ten finalists to their works responding to the theme of “Revelations” at the main festival exhibition: Kirill Golovchenko (Ukraine), Gidon Levin (Israel), Maria Sturm and Cemre Yeşil (Germany/Turkey), Anne Müchler and Nico Schmitz (Germany), Mario Brand (Germany), Qian Zhao (China), Andrea and Magda (Italy/France), M. Scott Brauer (USA), Michał Siarek (Poland), and Pierre Liebaert (Belgium).

“The exhibition was created in response to this year’s theme ‘Revelations’, which was meant to motivate the authors to use their own photography practice as a means of illustrating the unknown, unrecorded and unspoken transformational and everyday experiences [...],” says Lea Vene, the curator of the exhibition and a member of the jury that selected the finalists.

Alongside the main festival exhibition, Organ Vida also features workshops, artist talks, portfolio reviews, lectures and performances. The most prominent guests of the festival this year include Phillip Toledano, Donald Weber, Louise Clement, Gillian Wearing and Simon Norfolk.

Of particular interest to those wanting to learn more about the history of Croatia and the surrounding region is the exhibition Lessons from ‘91, which focuses on the Yugoslav wars.

“The exhibition entitled Lessons from ‘91 has gathered for the first time in this quantity at one single location photographers from the entire region and a few international guests in order to depict the war years in the area of the former Yugoslavia. The exhibition focuses on the position of the photographers and their perspective on the past war years without catering to political agendas,” explains the curator, photographer Sandra Vitaljić.

Organ Vida runs until 24 September at seventeen locations across Zagreb. More information can be found here.