The prestigious PhotoVogue Festival reaches a significant milestone with its tenth edition, scheduled to run from March 1-4, 2025, at Milan’s Biblioteca Nazionale Braidense. This internationally acclaimed photography celebration offers free admission to all attendees.
This anniversary edition marks a return to the festival’s founding theme while adapting it for contemporary discourse. The 2025 program examines the female perspective in photography, moving beyond traditional binary frameworks to explore what it truly means to perceive the world through women’s eyes. The festival challenges conventional notions of linear advancement and invites artists to contemplate women’s existence in an era where previously secured rights face increasing threats.
Comprehensive Programming
The festival features an extensive lineup including gallery exhibitions, expert discussions, and artistic presentations designed to provoke dialogue and challenge established perspectives. The four-day event encompasses multiple thematic explorations and showcases work from both emerging and established photographers.
Featured Discussions and Panels
The festival’s conversation program includes several notable sessions exploring various aspects of women’s experiences in art and society. Key discussions include examinations of women’s roles in artistic institutions, the intersection of desire and fashion photography, and the relationship between beauty and spectacle creation.
Additional panels address topics such as transgender rights in Colombia, sisterhood and belonging, bodily transformation through myth and ritual, and the connections between ecofeminism and interdependence. The program also features conversations about photography as a form of visual activism and women’s strength in claiming space.
War photography, intimacy, and survival form another thematic cluster, alongside discussions about sex work, queer communities, and the control of visual narratives. The program concludes with explorations of girlhood, fantasy, and remembrance.
Exhibition Highlights
The festival showcases multiple exhibition spaces, each focusing on different aspects of contemporary photography. The main exhibition features works selected through a global open submission process, presenting diverse interpretations of womanhood through female perspectives.
A dedicated regional showcase highlights photography from East and Southeast Asia, displaying the cultural richness and artistic diversity of these regions through fashion narratives, documentary work, and personal storytelling.
A specially curated section presents moving-image works by female and queer directors, exploring themes of intimacy, desire, and resistance. This collection includes pieces by renowned artists and emerging voices in video art.
Additional exhibition components feature collaborative projects with various organizations sharing the festival’s core values, including works addressing representation, authorship, and visibility as tools for cultural advocacy and social impact.
Leadership and Organization
The festival operates under the direction of the Head of Global PhotoVogue, with co-curation provided by the Visual Editor of PhotoVogue and the Senior Manager of Strategic Content Initiatives at Condé Nast. This leadership team brings together expertise in photography, visual storytelling, and content strategy to create a cohesive and impactful program.
The event represents a decade of exploring urgent contemporary issues through photography, having previously investigated themes including representation, masculinity, inclusivity, historical reframing, and artificial intelligence’s impact on image creation. This anniversary edition’s return to the female gaze demonstrates the festival’s commitment to revisiting and evolving its foundational themes.
Photo by Shobha La Porta on Unsplash
Photo by Manoa Angelo on Unsplash
Photo by Andre Blanco on Unsplash
