Welcome to Festival Zone for December 2024.
Festival 2024 review
Credit: David Watson - Robbie (2024 Aotearoa Music Photo Award submission)
What a year it has been! Our 2024, Believe [whakapono] edition brought together a myriad of projects started by the Auckland Festival of Photography Trust, and through our joint programming stream, many others presented by other organisations and galleries and we collaborated with a number of international festivals.
To start with: The Festival Trust curated and presented 10 exclusive outdoor exhibitions in key locations; five in-venue exhibitions, offered five annual Awards in 2024 to foster and support New Zealand photographers, including offering of our Kōwhai Residency programme aimed at giving NZ artists international experience in Tokyo, Japan.
Our joint programming saw 235+ artists featured in 60+ exhibitions across 40+ locations around Tāmaki Makaurau. Likewise, during the Festival we exhibited top international work from Canada, Japan, United States of America, Australia, Israel and more.
This year the Festival Trust continued to champion New Zealand photography internationally through our many overseas networks and partnerships. We hosted the Asia Pacific Photoforum annual meeting and were present at five international festivals including: Kyotographie, Japan, Singapore International Photo Festival, Tokyo T3 Photo Asia, Australia’s Head On and Japan's Higashikawa Youth Photo Festival by either in-person attendance, networking online, and/or judging and promoting the Auckland Festival of Photography's programme. Likewise, our Festival founder/CEO, Julia Durkin, MNZM was also delighted to be a global nominator for the prestigious Leica Oskar Barnack Award again in 2024, and was on the remote jury panel for open call of 10th edition of the Indian Photo Festival in Hyderabad.
As part of our year round activities, the Festival team hosted artists’ talks in March and October, and presented four exhibitions in public spaces outside the key June Festival period.
Credit: The Festival’s lightboxes displaying Jenna Eriksen’s new work Kiki No Kami
To achieve these, the Festival team responded and communicated via nearly 5,000 emails (a significant increase from previous years), and published 15 e-newsletters to share our and our partners’ accomplishments from January 2024 to now.
Plus, we secured growth across our digital communications on Instagram, Facebook, and X (formerly known as Twitter).
The Festival Trust also published a bespoke, ‘Believe’ themed, print zine as an educational touchstone to engage the regional community. This free publication was distributed in strategic locations across Auckland including to educational sector — schools, colleges, universities and students — who will benefit from knowledge, awareness and participation. This was a great success that was made possible thanks to The Gerrard and Marti Friedlander Charitable Trust.
The Auckland Festival of Photography Trust wishes all our dedicated team, supportive stakeholders, sponsors, galleries, photographers and international festival partners a fantastic summer season and a restful Christmas and New Year.
Vision - Photography Connecting Communities and People
Festival's Founder joins World Press Photo jury
Festival Founder/CEO Julia Durkin MNZM has been invited to form part of the Oceania/Asia Pacific Region jury of the World Press Photo Contest in 2025.
The annual competition is one of the most renowned, respected, and prestigious global contests recognising and celebrating the best photojournalism and documentary photography produced over the last year. “I am delighted and honoured to be the first New Zealander to be invited to judge this hugely prestigious global press contest,” said Durkin, “its important to have a Kiwi professional on board, and am so pleased to be taking on this role and flying the flag for Auckland and New Zealand.”
This comes on the back of the Festival’s exceptional reputation across Asia Pacific, and all the years of hard work done by the Festival Trust and team in the Asia Pacific region, raising the profile of NZ photography on the international stage, while developing lasting partnerships and friendships in the sector. “This is a career highlight for me in my over 30 years of working across the creative industries,” continues Durkin, “it is also great news for the Festival Trust, team and all our stakeholders who support our work.”
Durkin will be joined in the Oceania/Asia Pacific Jury by Chair: Candida Ng, Singapore, Deputy Photo Director, Asia-Pacific, AFP; Yoppy Pieter, Indonesia, Photographer, Educator; Nathan Tsui, Hong Kong, Photographer and Photography Writer, South China Morning Post; Shiho Fukada, Japan, Photographer and Filmmaker.
The Auckland Festival of Photography will be following 2025’s contest closely and we are encouraging New Zealand and wider Asia Pacific, Oceania region’s press photojournalists and documentary visual story tellers to enter. Entries are open now
Entering is free and prizes include up to €10,000 (approx. NZ$18,000), inclusion in an annual traveling exhibition, and more. Entries for the 2025 World Press Photo Contest opened on 1 December 2024 and close on 10 January 2025.
Click here on ‘How to prepare for the contest’
Kōwhai Residency News
In 2024 the Auckland Festival of Photography was proud to have entered its second year offering the Kōwhai Residencies in Yōga, Tokyo. After a very successful application process we selected Ardit Hoxha to the ‘creator residency,’ which he is currently undertaking and is due to complete in mid-December.
Following is a brief excerpt from a update written by Ardit about his time in Japan so far.
"My time in Tokyo has been inspiring and exciting. In trying to sum up my residency so far, all the words and descriptions I seem to be able to draw on are well-worn cliches. The city is seductive. Its scale is unlike anything I have experienced before. The museums, retail, galleries, and architecture that I have encountered have left me wide-eyed and, often, speechless. Creatively, the residency has shaken me out of habitual references and has challenged my own well-worn strategies for making imagery. The city's density alone has forced me to reconsider how I compose photographs, while the sheer scale of things has pushed me to approach my ‘subject’ differently.
Credit: Ardit Hoxha; Untitled - (Comme Des Garcons window, Omotesando, Tokyo)
With the guidance of Ihiro Hayami, the director of the Tokyo Institute of Photography, I am working on a series of images to showcase here in the final week of my residency. Titled after a poem by Baudelaire, 'Anywhere Out of the World', this work responds to the sites of leisure and recreation I have encountered along the way. Places which I often experienced through window displays, be they in the department store, museum or gallery.
In addition to presenting this show, I look forward to giving a talk at the TIP, where I will summarise this body of work. Overall, I am very grateful for the experience and am excited to share its outcome when I return home.".
Hoxha's residency new work exhibition 'Anywhere Out of the World' will be on for a weekend at 72 Gallery, Tokyo Institute of Photography, in Kyobashi, from 13th December to 15th December, and there is artist talk on this new work created and shown in Tokyo on 15th December at 3pm.
The Kōwhai Residency, which was first launched in 2023, offers an exclusive opportunity for New Zealand artists to experience one of the world’s greatest metropolises and foster robust, cultural links between Aotearoa and Japan. Through this residency the Trust offered travel to Japan for the selected artists, self-contained accommodation in Yōga, Tokyo and a weekly stipend so they can fully immerse themselves in their projects. We were delighted to have both unique and exciting practitioners take advantage of such a career-advancing opportunity. See our new Kōwhai Residency website www.thekowhairesidency.com for more.
We're thrilled to end our year on such a positive outcome for NZ photography excellence. Congratulations to Ardit on his hard work and talent creating a new body of work in Tokyo, Japan and immense thanks to our residency partners, Asia New Zealand Foundation and The Tokyo Institute of Photography.
Zoom along to Queens Wharf, Auckland
Deep Space, NASA Exhibition; Queens Wharf Fence Exhibition
On now at Queens Wharf — downtown by the Ferry terminal — is a selection of images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIR-Cam and transmitted about 1.5 million kilometres back to us. These images are exceptional, high resolution glimpses at the majesty and mysteries of deep space and raise questions about both the enormity of our galaxies, and humankind’s place within it. We invite you to explore these incredible photographs.
Presented exclusively by the Auckland Festival of Photography down here on earth’s Tāmaki Makaurau, thanks to Eke Panuku Development for their support.
2025 Festival seeks business sponsorships and partnerships
Auckland Festival of Photography is New Zealand’s premium international photographic festival, providing a diverse and inclusive platform, for the exchange of ideas, artistic expression, and engagement with photography and visual culture.
Credit: Peter Jennings; TV Presenter
Does your business or organisation want to amplify your message with a highly receptive, educated, diverse and culturally savvy audience?
Sponsorship opportunities are now open for the 2025 Auckland Festival of Photography. Your support empowers the next generation of photographers from Auckland, and beyond while also reaching our wide, and receptive audience.
The Auckland Festival of Photography offers our sponsors creative ways to achieve critical business goals through mutually beneficial partnerships.
We love to work with like-minded individuals and organisations that share our passion and commitment to delivering world-class photographic experiences that reflect all of us and which are accessible, for free, across the city, offering discovery and inspiring the imagination.
We have a flexible approach to creating strong and enduring partnerships which integrate our sponsors’ marketing needs and give visitors something they will remember.
Please contact Federico on business_afptrust@xtra.co.nz on email to start exploring your ideas with us.
Call for submissions coming soon!
The 22nd annual Auckland Festival of Photography is officially in planning mode, and we are excitedly awaiting to open our call for submissions. We will be officially opening submissions to artists, educators, and curators from around the region, nation and the world on 15th January 2025.
The theme for this year’s Festival has been announced as ‘Sustain’ [tautīnei], and we will be welcoming creative and insightful interpretations on the subject (for more information about our 2025 theme, click here).
Your participation can be in-venue, online, or outdoors and can include a wide variety of activities that celebrate photography and its makers. Exhibitions, talks, events, book launches, pub quizzes, performance projections and everything in between can be suggested to our Festival Trust.
The Festival serves as a gathering of cultural exchange for visual storytellers, lens-based artists, educators, students, and anyone passionate about the art form, to connect with a large and diverse audience and share lived experiences, stories, and dynamic creativity, especially during challenging times.Our joint programme model has been in place since 2004 allowing for full creative freedoms with work presented by artists, curators, groups and dealer galleries based in New Zealand. The Festival offers an inclusive platform for creative freedom that allows independence to choose how and where they showcase their work.
Maverick: Alex Mao Youth Photography Awards
Auckland Festival of Photography [whakaahua hākari] is delighted to share in the CBD, our curated exhibition, Maverick: Alex Mao Youth Photography Awards Portraits - featuring various ‘edgy and blurry’ portraits from the Alex Mao Youth Photography Award archive 2019-2024.
Credit: Joshua Pearson; Caressing Dreams (2019 Youth Photo Award entry)
On from 10th December, over summer to late January 2025, at our Pop up gallery, The Strand, Elliott Street interior arcade. Open Monday to Sunday, 10am - 6pm, late night Thursday til 7pm.
Thanks to Auckland Council City Activation team.
