The evening at the Indian Photo Festival (IPF) began as though it were an exponentially slow photo, as shadows matured into perfectly defined shapes, followed by a progression of conversations. Like many others at the State Gallery of Art, Madhapur for the 11th edition of IPF, there was an electric excitement; a small, electromagnetic confusion surrounding the curators moving from frame to frame, along with the photo editor carrying all their extra weight of adrenaline like an extra lens; and the end result was visitors stopping at the same time, and sharing the same feeling of awe, as a photo magically captivated them all.
The 11th edition of the IPF is being held this year, as the longest-running International Photography Festival in India. This year’s global open call pulled in 820 submissions from 50 countries, all reviewed anonymously by a jury. The result is a festival that stretches across continents and emotional terrains: from Alessandro Celante’s Impermanent Masks that drape Brazil’s rituals in mystery, to Rohit Chawla’s Rain Dogs that wander through India’s soaked heartbreaks; from Seunggu Kim’s Better Days, a wistful slice of South Korean leisure, to Giles Clarke’s Devastating Sudan: In Time of War, where conflict lingers like smoke you can still taste. There are the haunting stillnesses of Nazanin Alipour Jeddi’s Lingering Shadows, the burning urgency of Glorianna Ximendaz’s Slash and Burn, the sharp tenderness of Marylise Vigneau’s Frontlines of Dignity, and Elke Scholiers’ Surreal, displaced landscapes in No Man’s Land. Even food becomes rebellion in Hridya Sadanand’s Cooking with Taboo.
Threaded through these solo voices are collective ones — Panos Pictures, Press Trust of India, the APF Street Photography Awards, and the IPF Portrait Prize 2025, whose winners were announced amid applause that travelled through the gallery like a ripple of shared pride.
What began years ago as a simple instinct — that India had extraordinary photographers but very few places that truly saw them — has grown into one of South Asia’s most important visual-arts platforms. Aquin Mathews, the festival director, welcomed the gathering with a heartwarming speech, leaving the audience more curious to explore the festival. Audiences were allowed access to a visually rich archive titled Vault with evidence of how photography shapes our understanding of the world today
A well-known Magnum Photographer, Newsha Tavakolian, opened the evening with a talk about the need to connect with other people through their work and how photographers must understand their role and responsibility as creators when they produce images. The festival’s underlying principles will be made available in the following days.
The schedule folds easily into the gallery’s rhythm: a documentary screening of Nagoba Jatara by Jennifer Alphonse; an analogue photography and darkroom workshop where the smell of chemicals fills the air; an art talk by Sudeep Chatterjee; panels on the future of print and the female gaze; each promising its own small shift in how visitors will look at the exhibitions again afterward. And on 5 December, the festival extends beyond the gallery walls for the opening of Aliona Kardash’s exhibition at Goethe-Zentrum Hyderabad.
With exhibitions continuing until 4 January 2026, the Indian Photo Festival opens its doors wide and invites Hyderabad.