KYOTOGRAPHIE Kyoto International Photography Festival celebrates its 14th edition in 2026. From April 18 (Sat) to May 17 (Sun), the festival will unfold over 30 days across historic buildings and cultural institutions throughout Kyoto. This year, 13 artists and collectives from 8 countries – including Japan, South Africa, Uruguay, France and Palestine – will participate. In addition to exhibitions, talks, workshops and kids’ programs will be held at multiple venues, transforming the city into a living stage for photography and art.


The theme of KYOTOGRAPHIE Kyoto International Photography Festival 2026 is “EDGE.” True to that word, Kyoto will host a multitude of “edges” this year – from physical precipices to social peripheries, from emotional thresholds to the very limits of perception.

What “EDGE” Illuminates

“EDGE” is elusive, constantly shifting and difficult to grasp. It may evoke the physical tension of standing on a cliff, the brink where collisions occur, the precarity of living on the margins, or the determination required to step into an unknown avant-garde. The sensations we associate with “edge” are never singular. In the statement announced by the festival organizers, photography itself is described as a medium that inherently carries its own “thresholds” within. Since its invention, photography has rarely occupied the center of the arts; instead, it has existed at the margins, oscillating between record and art, between truth and fiction, and continually redefining the question of what photography can be.

Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art/Photo by Takeshi Asano
Today we find ourselves in a moment shaped by the rise of new technologies and the incessant flood of images. Within this context, photography stands at a critical edge where anxiety about an uncertain future coexists with the exhilaration of discovering something yet unseen. No one knows what lies beyond that edge. Is it a point from which things collapse into chaos, or a gateway to another world?

KYOTOGRAPHIE 2026 approaches this in-between zone as a place where tension and transformation arise simultaneously. Radical photographic practices will be exhibited alongside works that quietly observe the decline of cities; the records of marginalized communities will intersect with ongoing questions of colonialism and territorial disputes. By turning the lens toward the transcendental force of nature, the festival invites visitors to step right up to the brink – to the very “edge” – where new horizons of vision, thought and creation may discreetly open up, even when we are living through the darkest of environmental, political or personal realities.

Kondaya Genbei Chikuin-no-Ma /© Naoyuki Ogino
“EDGE” is, at once, a site of profound uncertainty and a site where new possibilities are born. It is where one ending gently connects to a new beginning. Making this moment visible within the time and space of Kyoto is at the heart of KYOTOGRAPHIE 2026.

Six Artists, Six Ways of Standing at the Edge

These projects by six emblematic artists in this edition each embody the theme of “EDGE” in their own distinct way.


Daido Moriyama
Venue: Kyoto City KYOCERA Museum of Art, Main Building, South Wing 2F
Curator: Thyago Nogueira (Instituto Moreira Salles)
Presented by Sigma

For over sixty years, Daido Moriyama has persistently pushed against the conventions of photographic expression. This exhibition looks not only at his iconic images but also at the mediums that have defined his practice – magazines, photobooks and other printed forms – to follow his radical and prolific trajectory in all directions.

Growing up amid the postwar economic boom and the rapid transformation of Japanese society, Moriyama relentlessly recorded the world around him while questioning the roles played by cameras and print media, and how images circulate and are consumed. Influenced by figures such as Andy Warhol, William Klein and Jack Kerouac, he has probed themes including representation of reality, the tension between truth and fiction, and the relationship between memory and history – always through the lens of photography.

From Letter to St-Loup, 1990./© Daido Moriyama/Daido Moriyama Photo Foundation.
At KYOTOGRAPHIE 2026, a retrospective curated by Thyago Nogueira of the Instituto Moreira Salles (Brazil) will be reconfigured specifically for Kyoto. Contributions to the legendary magazine Provoke, the groundbreaking photobook Farewell Photography (1972), and a rich body of photo-essays and publications reveal a gaze that has never ceased to stand at the edge, perpetually testing what photography can do.



Linder Sterling
Venue: The Museum of Kyoto Annex
Presented by CHANEL Nexus Hall

Linder Sterling, who emerged from the British punk scene in the late 1970s, is one of the United Kingdom’s most influential and unconventional contemporary artists. Working boldly with photography and photomontage, she has challenged and reconfigured stereotypes around desire and the female body, earning widespread acclaim.

Oedipus, 2021/© Linder, Courtesy of the artist and Modern Art, London
This retrospective, realized in close collaboration with the artist, traces her pioneering creative journey and presents key works in Kyoto. Following a major exhibition at London’s Hayward Gallery, this first solo show in Japan underscores Linder’s status as a leading feminist voice in British art – and offers an opportunity to share her decades-long engagement with one of the most contested edges of all: the image of “woman.”



Thandiwe Muriu
・"CAMO" series
venue: Kondaya Genbei Chikuin-no-Ma
Presented by LONGCHAMP
・KYOTOGRAPHIE African Residency Program
Venues: Demachi Masugata Shopping Arcade – DELTA/KYOTOGRAPHIE Permanent Space



For Kenyan photographer Thandiwe Muriu, photography is both a way to honor her cultural roots and a means to question the cultural forces that shape identity. In her signature series "CAMO", sitters are wrapped in the same textiles that form the background, allowing their bodies to visually dissolve into the pattern while simultaneously emerging as canvases that reflect their own selves. Everyday household objects and hairstyles inspired by archival photographs are woven into each image as layered motifs. African proverbs accompany the photographs, carrying the oral wisdom that has been passed down across generations and allowing culture to be transmitted through visual form.

An Abundance of Plenty, 2024/© Thandiwe Muriu, Courtesy 193 Gallery
Invited as KYOTOGRAPHIE’s African Artist-in-Residence, Muriu will present "CAMO" alongside new works created during her stay in Kyoto. While researching the histories of cloth and textile, she repeatedly encountered references to Japan. Her Kyoto exhibitions incorporate traditional Japanese fabrics and patterns, exploring the visual connections and overlapping histories between Kenya and Japan. The vivid interplay of textiles in her images raises questions about where cultural boundaries are drawn – and who has the power to draw them.



Sari Shibata
Venue: ASPHODEL
Ruinart Japan Award 2025 Winner
Presented by Ruinart

Sari Shibata, winner of the Ruinart Japan Award at KYOTOGRAPHIE 2025, spent a residency at the historic Champagne maison in Reims, France, working among its surrounding vineyards and forests. The series presented in this exhibition traces the story of a woman who grows and ripens like grapes, season by season. Having grown up in the mountain village of Nanto, Toyama Prefecture, and later living much of her adult life in urban environments, Shibata has long placed the relationship between “human” and “nature” at the core of her practice. In Reims, she once again experienced what it means to “return to nature” – and how deeply that experience can move the heart – by performing the role of this woman herself within the landscape.

© Sari Shibata
Her photographs weave together awe and gratitude toward nature, alongside a sense of inheritance rooted in her own hometown. Standing before the uncontrollable power of nature, Shibata quietly asks: what stance can human beings take? The work unfolds as a meditation on how we might live at the edge of forces far greater than ourselves.



Federico Estol
KG＋SELECT Award 2025 Winner

Every day in La Paz, Bolivia, more than 3,000 shoeshine workers take to the streets. While their labor supports a significant portion of the city’s informal economy, they occupy a precarious position, exposed to discrimination and often excluded from basic labor rights. Federico Estol’s project Shine Heroes reimagines these workers not as anonymous figures on the margins but as protagonists and “heroes.”To conceal their identities from neighbors and family members – many of whom do not know they make a living polishing shoes – the workers often wear masks or hooded gear. Estol photographs these disguises not as symbols of shame or invisibility, but as costumes that embody identity and solidarity.

Shine Heroes, 2018/© Federico Estol
Working with 60 shoeshiners and the local organization Hormigón Armado, which publishes a monthly newspaper they sell for income, Estol has developed the project into a multifaceted collaboration. A special newspaper issue led to further spin-offs, including CDs, calendars and postcards. Winner of the KG＋SELECT 2025 Award, Shine Heroes will be reconfigured as a solo exhibition for KYOTOGRAPHIE 2026. Tools actually used in La Paz will be displayed in the venue, offering a chance to witness how people living at the social edge reclaim their narratives through images.



Fatma Hassona
Venue: Hachiku-an (Former Kawasaki Residence)

Fatma Hassona was a photographer and activist who used her own body and lens to communicate daily life in Gaza to the world. For eighteen months leading up to her death, she continued to share fragments of hope and searing observations of injustice through social media – until April 16, 2025, when she was killed at the age of 25 in an airstrike that also claimed the lives of several family members. Her photographs convey more than fear and loss. They contain the will to live together, humor and small moments of joy that persist even amid devastation. For Hassona, photography was a means of telling the world: “We are here. We are living.” Her images step beyond the faceless category of “people in a conflict zone” and instead attend to the specific lives and dignity of individuals.

© Fatma Hassona
KYOTOGRAPHIE 2026 will present a selection of her precious works, honoring her unwavering commitment and vision. According to a United Nations report as of September 4, 2025, more than 248 journalists have been killed in Gaza – the highest number recorded in any modern conflict. In the face of unprecedented danger, Hassona never stopped trying to bear witness.

Within the quiet setting of the Kyoto machiya Hachikuan, her gaze will resonate not merely as documentation, but as an act of looking at the lives and deaths of named individuals. The exhibition is intended as a space of mourning and reflection, inviting visitors to remember the countless lives lost and to hold a wish for peace.

From KG＋ to KYOTOPHONIE: “EDGE” Expands Across the City

The appeal of KYOTOGRAPHIE extends far beyond its main program. The satellite event KG＋ and the sound-driven festival KYOTOPHONIE will further deepen and expand the theme of “EDGE” throughout Kyoto.

KG＋ is a city-wide program in which emerging artists and curators from Japan and abroad present exhibitions in galleries, machiya townhouses and commercial spaces. Open-call projects and award-winning shows appear unexpectedly in the midst of everyday scenery, offering viewers the chance to encounter photography in places they might never have anticipated. In doing so, KG＋ gently blurs various boundaries – between center and periphery, professional and amateur, local and global – creating another kind of edge within the festival.

Ryu Hyunmin "eight eyed boy" / © Hyunmin Ryu
KYOTOPHONIE, on the other hand, began as a festival centered on “sound.” In dialogue with KYOTOGRAPHIE, it has cultivated spaces where music, sound art and performance intersect. If KYOTOGRAPHIE explores the visual edges of photography, KYOTOPHONIE might be said to probe the edges of perception that emerge through listening and sonic experience.

Dora Morelenbaum
In 2026, Kyoto will become a landscape where photography and music, historic architecture and contemporary art, local communities and international artists intersect in complex ways – each articulating the theme of “EDGE” in their own language.

What Lies Beyond the Line?

The tension of a precipice, the unease of standing at the margins, the exhilaration of stepping into the unknown – KYOTOGRAPHIE 2026 is a festival that excavates these sensations that reside at the “edge,” within the time and space of Kyoto.

Truth and fiction, center and periphery, nature and humanity, the individual and society: boundaries are being drawn and erased everywhere at once. In such a moment, the theme “EDGE” also serves as an invitation to reconsider how each of us sees the world. The photographs we encounter in Kyoto this spring may subtly reshape the contours of the edges we carry within ourselves.