For its 8th edition The Tbilisi Photo Festival, a showcase for regional and international photography in the Caucasus, is back with a provocative and diverse program. The central theme of the 2017 edition is fashion. The festival program emphasizes all existing connections between fashion, the tradition of identity representation, ideology and the photographic image.
From Guy Bourdin’s seductive avant-garde photographs to Viviane Sassen’s daring approach to fashion images and the rare collection of East German fashion photography from the Stasi period (1970s), as well as never-before-seen pre-Islamic revolution Iranian Fashion magazines, the week-long festival of shows, events and talks once again breaks new ground in subjects, styles and ways of seeing.
The Tbilisi Photo Festival also hosts the world premier exhibition of Russian Journal Revisited by Magnum photographer Thomas Dworzak and British writer Julius Strauss. 70 years later they travel in the footsteps of famous American writer John Steinbeck and Magnum agency co-founder Robert Capa, who visited and documented life in Georgia, Ukraine and Russia two years after the end of World War II.
Another 2017 highlight of this year’s program is the exhibition-tribute to the late American photojournalist and co-founder of Noor Images, Stanley Greene. Curated by Anna Shpakova, “See You in My Dreams”: Intimate Diary of Stanley Greene is a presentation of Stanley Greene’s unseen series of polaroids and personal letters.
Tbilisi Photo Festival was co-founded by French photographer, currently Photo Editor in chief at the French daily newspaper Liberation, Lionel Charrier and the Georgian photo curator and journalist Nestan Nijaradze. It was first launched in 2010, in partnership with Les Rencontres d’Arles. With a seducing selection of exhibitions and events this year, it ensures a bit more its place as a must-stop meeting-point for photography and photographers from across Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
Tbilisi Photo Festival
September 13 – 20, 2017
Tbilisi, Georgia
http://www.tbilisiphotofestival.com/
