Fotograf Zone Festival invites audiences to its 16th edition, taking place from 1 to 11 October 2026 across several venues in Prague. Under the title Wild Kin, this year’s festival will explore questions of relationships, attention, and forms of coexistence in the contemporary world.
Over ten days, the festival will present exhibitions, public-space interventions, discussions, workshops, and other programmes dedicated to contemporary photography and visual art. For the first time ever, Prague audiences will have the opportunity to experience a solo exhibition by renowned conceptual photographer Jochen Lempert.
This year’s edition will examine the role contemporary art can play in imagining new forms of coexistence and mutuality. It will focus on relationships, attention, and the ways in which art can help us rethink our connections with the world around us. “We are interested in forms of coexistence and attention that resist the logic of constant acceleration and turn towards more intuitive ways of engaging with natural resources. Small moments in which closeness, concentration, and a relationship to what cannot be fully owned or extracted can be experienced anew,” explains artistic director Markéta Kinterová.
The festival’s main exhibition project is a solo exhibition by acclaimed German photographer Jochen Lempert, developed in collaboration with curator Anna Voswinckel and presented at Fotograf Zone Gallery. Lempert’s photographic practice is rooted in long-term observation of nature and the relationships between species. Trained as a biologist, he has consistently explored the relationship between humans and the world around them, allowing his work to enter into a natural dialogue with the thematic focus of this year’s festival.
Further programme highlights will include exhibition projects at TYRŠ the human lab and in the public spaces of Holešovice Market. The festival has also launched an open call for projects to be presented as posters at Můstek metro station, where works by four selected artists will be shown. The programme will also feature an exhibition of artists’ books in the Fotograf Zone Reading Room, alongside accompanying events for various age groups, including performances, workshops, openings, guided tours, artist talks, and walks.
The festival will officially open on 1 October 2026.
Details of the programme, participating artists, and other festival sections will be published gradually at FESTIVAL.FOTOGRAF.ZONE.
Infrastructures of Imagination
The exhibition explores how mythical and ritual narratives are reconfigured within an environment of data abstraction, distributed knowledge, and the aesthetic protocols of the present, and how digital culture shapes new forms of storytelling.
Michal Kalhous – Goosefoot and Raspberries, The Road to Victory
The exhibition *Goosefoot and Raspberries, The Road to Victory* presents a series of photographs created over the recent period. It is an experimental tool of synthesis and a search for a path to fulfillment. At the same time, it is a purposeful, captivating exploration of suddenness and their relationships. *Goosefoot and Raspberries, The Road to Victory* is once again an attempt at a dialogue between inner experience and a higher, transcendent order.
FOTOGRAF Josef Sudek
The legendary Josef Sudek (1896–1976) is now regarded as one of the great figures of world photography. After his death, a substantial part of his artistic estate was donated by his sister Božena to the collections of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Prague. It comprises approximately 21,000 original prints and around 27,000 negatives.