Ideas

Woman is a complex dimension, fortunately!

The 10th PhotoVogue Festival celebrates the kaleidoscopic gaze of women with two exhibitions

by Veronica Constance Ward

3 March 2026

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

3' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Complexity is a dimension that belongs to women and that contemporary photography continues to interrogate. The PhotoVogue Festival 2026, hosted in the rooms of the Braidense Library in Milan, celebrates this multiplicity through images, videos and conversations that focus on the way women express, represent and imagine themselves: not a univocal identity, but a stratification of experiences and perspectives.

Emotional memory, women's ability to analyse their own souls, to grasp and welcome their own fragility and that of others, are just some of the many dimensions that women are able to experience with that 'natural intentionality' capable of building a generous awareness, which is preserved and handed down through the generations.

PhotoVogue Festival

Women are said to be able to see beyond the obvious, beyond conditioning by cultural origin and upbringing. And it is precisely in that beyond, in the overcoming of the dichotomy between the male and female gaze, that the PhotoVogue Festival reflects on the fluidity and intensity of the lived experiences of women who assert their right not only to be seen, but also to see and to shape visual culture on their own terms.

Braidense Library

This capacity for openness towards oneself and towards the outside world is evident in the various exhibitions of the Festival within the rooms of the Braidense Library, which reinforce the tension between intimate dimension and universal value. Between historical shelves and display cases, images dialogue with the memory preserved in books, reminding us - a concept that is anything but banal - that not only are all women different, but that the gaze of each one opens up precious perspectives that are never taken for granted.

The choral dimension of the event, strongly desired by Alessia Glaviano, Head of Global PhotoVogue and director of the Festival, is affirmed as a central value to preserve and promote a plurality of voices, backgrounds and languages.

Exhibitions and the programme

With a palimpsest of four exhibitions of images and visual contributions, eight video documentaries, a stand-up comedy show, five conversations and twenty panel discussions, the PhotoVogue Festival explores, through photography and video, the effort to construct an identity and challenge the dominant visual paradigms, questioning the assumption that rights, visibility and recognition are guaranteed, and highlighting how social conquests, once considered secure, may now be under threat again.

The Women by Women exhibition, which gives its title to the 2026 edition, brings together the works of forty-five women artists, photographers and videomakers selected through an international call for entries that received almost 100,000 applications from over nine thousand five hundred artists from one hundred and forty-nine countries and territories.

East and South East Asian Panorama

The second open call exhibition, East and South East Asian Panorama, with forty finalist artists, is the result of a wide-ranging selection from the applications of contemporary Asian photographers and offers a topical and layered look at photography today.

Particularly significant are the visual contributions and videos, for the first time in Italia, as in the exhibition Pleasure & Disobedience, curated by Sofia Kouloukouri and Alexios Seilopoulos, which presents, in collaboration with the National Museum of Athens, videos and works by cult artists such as Nan Goldin and Romy & Laure.

I talk

The lively heart of the Festival has always been the talks, conversations and round tables that will follow one another in a continuous marathon between the protagonists of the event. Great professionals and figures from the worlds of photography, fashion and female and non-binary activism - including Zanele Muholi, Camila Falquez and Anastasia Taylor-Lind - will take turns over the four days in open conversations with which the public can freely interact.

At a time in history when cultural and social achievements cannot be considered irreversible, the PhotoVogue Festival reaffirms the value of the gaze as a cultural and political act. Images do not merely represent the world: they contribute to redefining it. And in the plurality of female visions, photography today finds one of its most necessary and conscious expressions.

For the full programme of the PhotoVogue Festival:

http://www.vogue.com/photovogue/festival

PHOTOVOGUE FESTIVAL - WOMEN BY WOMEN - Women for Women, Milan, Braidense National Library, until 4 March