Time Machine

Bristol Photo Festival is an international biennial of contemporary photography.We organise a programme of exhibitions, talks and workshops, bringing together leading photographic voices from across the world. Alongside this work, we develop long-term projects in collaboration with local communities. Our mission is to present nuanced and unexpected stories that foster greater understanding of shared pasts, presents and futures. Our work is internationally-focussed yet locally grounded, built from the urgencies of our city and its inhabitants. As a platform, we support artists to experiment, creating work that breaks with convention, exploring the possibilities of photography as a political tool today. Our second edition (2024) drew over 115,000 visitors, with 14 exhibitions staged across the city’s museums, galleries and independent spaces.

The third edition (Opening Week 14-17 October 2026) will be titled Time Machine, showcasing photographic works that help us to experience the present as a place where past and future collide, shaping how we understand and interpret the world around us.

The way we experience the world is always caught up with our memories of the past, as well as stories we tell about the future. The present is a place where past and future collide, shaping how we understand and interpret the world around us. The third edition of Bristol Photo Festival will focus on projects that travel through time, using the past to better understand our current world, while always looking towards the future. Key strands will include: Histories from below - historical events reconsidered from perspectives that have too often gone overlooked by those who hold power.Rituals - events through which communities mark the passing of time, creating a shared rhythm and collective history.Worlds yet to come - dreams of the future that might inform how we live today.Experiences of time - projects that focus on slowness and waiting, or the sensation of a world speeding up.

Bristol Photo Festival is managed, curated and produced by IC Visual Lab (ICVL), an independent visual arts organisation based in Bristol (UK).