Strong event program across the city
Image credit: Joakim Eskildsen from his series 'Home works' exhibition at Fotografisk Center opening with a talk on 2. june.
Copenhagen Photo Festival presents the final festival program of the year, which, in addition to all the photo exhibitions, offers everything from inspiring talks and investigative panel debates to thought-provoking films and workshops that focus on rewilding. The festival opens with a curated grand opening event on 1 June, while three time World Press Photo winner Mads Nissen rounds off the festival with the last talk of the year on 11 June and unveiling of next year’s theme.
Copenhagen Photo Festival opens on Thursday 1 June with a large grand opening event that marks the beginning of 11 days filled with contemporary photography, powerful films and insightful talks. The festival's grand opening is celebrated with DJ, happy hour and a rewilded photo performance as well as guided tours by the exhibiting artists in the exhibition park's 13 exhibitions on Refshaleøen as a taste of what the festival has to offer.
Explore all exhibitions and events at the festival center
Topical talks and panels examine art, photography and sustainable practices
In addition to presenting its visitors with contemporary photography, Copenhagen Photo Festival also wants to create a space for dialogue and inspiration through an extensive program of talks and panels.
Under this year's main theme of ‘rewilding’, the festival opens the doors to a series of panel debates in collaboration with FUTURES Photography, where sustainable art practices, art in public space and the importance of artificial intelligence for future photography and art are discussed.
The panels include photographers exhibiting at the festival flanked by a number of guest speakers and experts such as Carina Hammer, responsible for sustainability at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Lisa Giomar Hydén Exhibitions Director at Fotografiska Stockholm and Majken Overgaard from Korridor, but also Raphaël Biollay, curator at Images Vevey and Jacob Theilgaard, director of Bæredygtigt Kulturliv.nu.
Reserve your seat at the panels
From Fryd Frydendahl to Torben Eskerod
In addition to the professional program on Refshaleøen, this year you can experience interesting conversations about photography all over the city, including at the photo book market at Kunstforeningen GL STRAND, Theilgaard Academy, Thiemers Magasin and at the Fotografisk Center and Det Kgl. Library and a number of other exhibition venues of the festival. On the program are, among others, Fryd Frydendahl, Joakim Eskildsen, Per Bak Jensen, Ole Christiansen, Lærke Posselt and Torben Eskerod.
‘Rewild’ your photographic skills
During the Copenhagen Photo Festival, there will be a series of workshops that will take you back to the early techniques of photography. Here you can try your hand at cyanotype, wet plate photography, polaroid transfer or sew your own notebook with the elegant Japanese bookbinding technique.
Photography in the Cinemateque
This year, Copenhagen Photo Festival also offers an extensive film program with subsequent talks both on Refshaleøen and in a special photo film program at the Cinematheque that shows e.g. acclaimed films by Sally Mann, Jacob Riis, Nan Goldin,Helmut Newton and the pioneeren and mad amn Eadweard Muybridge.
Phie Ambo in dialogue about ‘rewilding’
At the festival center you can experience Phie Ambo's latest film "Organised Wildness", which focuses sharply on the dilemmas and conflicting interests that arise in a community in Thy in North Jutland, when the community is introduced to the rewilding of a local forest area. The film will be with English subtitles and after the screening Phie Ambo will enter a conversation on how we can rewild Denmark and have more wild nature. The film screening is made possible in collaboration with Imagine5 and Bio Bio.
Book your seat for Organiseret vildskab
Three-time World Press Photo winner puts the finishing touches on this year's festival
One of the world's most recognized photographers, Mads Nissen, who has won the main prize in World Press Photo three times, rounds off the Copenhagen Photo Festival with an artist talk about his latest project SANGRE BLANCA.
SANGRE BLANCA was made in a unique collaboration with the Colombian artist Juan Arreaza, and examines the journey of cocaine from a laboratory in Colombia to a nightclub in Kødbyen in Copenhagen. The project unfolds through photographs, oil paintings and installations and gives a unique insight into the historically high cocaine trade and its human consequences.
Open call 2024 kickoff
With this presentation, Mads Nissen connects to the Copenhagen Photo Festival 2024, where he will be headliner with his exhibition of SANGRE BLANCA. In connection with the talk, the veil will also be lifted for next year's main theme which kicks off the open call for the 2024 edition of Copenhagen Photo Festival.
Read more about the closing event
Explore the full festival programme
Opening // Joakim Eskildsen - Home Works
Exhibition opening // 17:00 - 19:00
Home works is the title of the internationally renowned artist Joakim Eskildsen’s years long and comprehensive project, which he began in 2005 and is still currently working on today. The exhibition Joakim Eskildsen: Home Works is the first major presentation of Home Works in Denmark and internationally.
Eskildsen works in the crossfield between art and documentary with a unique sense for light, color and composition, which often evokes a picturesque mood in his work, and which has made his artistic practice known internationally. He has often depicted people and their living conditions which he has come to know through longer stays and travels to Cuba, USA and a large number of countries in Europe. For seven years, Eskildsen and author Cia Rinne traveled around the world and portrayed the living conditions and culture of the Roma, which became the extensive work The Roma Journeys (2000-2006), that intimately and poetically depicts the largest minority in Europe.
After Eskildsen had children, he turned the camera lens towards his own life with the project Home Works where he has portrayed the family’s different homes, his children’s upbringing as well as the changing seasons and the passage of time. Home works touches on and explores in a sensory way, general and universal questions about home, the human existence and the beauty and transience of life. The exhibition will unfold Home Works chronologically through different chapters based on the family’s different homes and will touch upon themes and excerpts in the extensive work such as seasons and childhood. Through this, the exhibition will illuminate the character of the multifaceted project and the special temporality which is connected to the evolving of life and the human being as well as the cycle of nature.
About the artist
Joakim Eskildsen (born 1971) was trained by court photographer Rigmor Mydtskov and graduated from Aalto University in Helsinki. Eskildsen has exhibited widely nationally and internationally, i.a. in The Black Diamond, Royal Danish Library, in 2016 and most recently in 2022 at the National Museum of Contemporary Art Lisbon and Abbaye de Jumièges, France. He has also carried out assignments for, among others, the New Yorker, The New York Times and Time Magazine.
The exhibition is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, Politiken Foundation and Augustinus Fonden.
(c) Joakim Eskildsen, from the series Home Works, 2005 – (ongoing)
Artist talk // Joakim Eskildsen & Rune Gade
Artist talk // 16:00 - 17:00
Joakim Eskildsen in conversation with Rune Gade.
In connection with Fotografisk Center's exhibition opening of Joakim Eskildsen: Home Works, a conversation will take place between artist Joakim Eskildsen and Rune Gade, researcher at the University of Copenhagen. The conversation will be based on Eskildsen's artistic practice and on-going project Home Works.
The conversation will take place before the official exhibition opening.
Sign up is required. Get your tickets directly here: https://fotografiskcenter.mybigcommerce.com/event-0206-16-17-joakim-eskildsen-i-samtale-med-rune-gade
(c) Joakim Eskildsen, from the series Home Works, 2005 – (ongoing)
Exhibition // Joakim Eskildsen - Home Works
Home works is the title of the internationally renowned artist Joakim Eskildsen’s years long and comprehensive project, which he began in 2005 and is still currently working on today. The exhibition Joakim Eskildsen: Home Works is the first major presentation of Home Works in Denmark and internationally.
Eskildsen works in the crossfield between art and documentary with a unique sense for light, color and composition, which often evokes a picturesque mood in his work, and which has made his artistic practice known internationally. He has often depicted people and their living conditions which he has come to know through longer stays and travels to Cuba, USA and a large number of countries in Europe. For seven years, Eskildsen and author Cia Rinne traveled around the world and portrayed the living conditions and culture of the Roma, which became the extensive work The Roma Journeys (2000-2006), that intimately and poetically depicts the largest minority in Europe.
After Eskildsen had children, he turned the camera lens towards his own life with the project Home Works where he has portrayed the family’s different homes, his children’s upbringing as well as the changing seasons and the passage of time. Home works touches on and explores in a sensory way, general and universal questions about home, the human existence and the beauty and transience of life. The exhibition will unfold Home Works chronologically through different chapters based on the family’s different homes and will touch upon themes and excerpts in the extensive work such as seasons and childhood. Through this, the exhibition will illuminate the character of the multifaceted project and the special temporality which is connected to the evolving of life and the human being as well as the cycle of nature.
About the artist
Joakim Eskildsen (born 1971) was trained by court photographer Rigmor Mydtskov and graduated from Aalto University in Helsinki. Eskildsen has exhibited widely nationally and internationally, i.a. in The Black Diamond, Royal Danish Library, in 2016 and most recently in 2022 at the National Museum of Contemporary Art Lisbon and Abbaye de Jumièges, France. He has also carried out assignments for, among others, the New Yorker, The New York Times and Time Magazine.
The exhibition is supported by the Danish Arts Foundation, Politiken Foundation and Augustinus Fonden.
Opening hours
Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday: 12:00 - 18:00
Thursday: 12:00 - 20:00
Saturday - Sunday: 12:00 - 16:00
Monday closed
(c) Joakim Eskildsen, from the series Home Works, 2005 – (ongoing)