Festival of Political Photography 2024

The theme of the Festival of Political Photography 2024 is diagnosis. The four works in the exhibition deal with the diagnoses that society imposes on individuals and the collective resistance to them. The exhibition asks what if the problem is social conditions and it is society rather than individuals that needs to be healed. Laia Abril's (b. 1986) work on mass hysteria explores collective illness from a feminist perspective. Abril shows that mass hysteria can be a form of community’s resistance. Myriam Boulos' (b. 1992) What's ours is a portrait of the Lebanese capital Beirut, both as a city and as a society living amid revolution and corruption. Alongside the turmoil, images of intimacy and carnivalesque demonstrations offer hope for a better future. August Joensalo's ( b. 1993) video work F64.8 – Other gender identity disorder deals with the rights of trans people. In Joensalo's work the violence of the gatekeeping system for trans people is juxtaposed with the solidarity and love within trans communities. Elis Sinistö (1919-2004), portrayed by Jan Kaila (b. 1957), was a reclusive mystic and artist detached from society and its practices who lived in a world of his own creation. The photo series is a part of the collection of the Finnish Museum of Photography.