“What do people believe in and how do they organize their perception of reality? What order do they create to understand and tame the complexity of our universe?” These decisions, conscious or not, are what drive the 2025 edition of Fotofestiwal in Łódź. These are all representations that influence how we view our environment, transforming the image into a tool of resistance or propaganda.
At the heart of the main program, Debi Cornwall unveils “Model Citizens,” a series already acclaimed at the Rencontres d’Arles 2024. The former lawyer turned photographer explores the creation of fake villages and communities built to train American soldiers for combat. Underneath, she questions the notions of performance and play that fuel our citizenship.
Also fascinated by the role of entertainment in our understanding of history, Michal Sita draws inspiration in his project “History of Poland” from the show The Eagle and the Cross staged in a small town of 10,000 inhabitants where 300 people come to perform sequences rooted in national mythology. Finally, it is through the passion of a group of Palestinian skateboarders that Maen Hammad depicts the suffering of his country of origin, between self-improvement and camaraderie, he weaves a backdrop of “violence, desire for freedom and search for space”.
Stimulate critical thinking
“The status of these images fascinated me: were they mechanical and objective documents of a performative act? (…) Or could they be considered a kind of glimpse into the past itself?” asks Michal Sita. Through the Fotofestiwal exhibitions, the notion of objectivity fades away, determined to blur the lines. And it is through its porosity that it leads the visitor to question: should we always question the vision of reality that is presented to us? Isn’t this vision necessarily influenced by events, conflicts, and geopolitical issues? Can history, moreover, be objective?
For Debi Cornwall, these gray areas are precisely the most important areas to analyze. “The opening of the exhibition in Arles last summer took place just days after the French legislative elections and the disastrous Biden debate. It was a historic moment: the whole world was becoming aware of the same phenomenon that I had identified in the United States,” she confides.
A tension synonymous with impact that Maen Hammad also strives to emphasize: “My work is dedicated to those I see as friends and not subjects. This proximity allows me to illustrate what it means to live, create, and navigate within a racist supremacist regime that seeks only to dominate,” he says.
But how, then, can we move beyond mere reporting and allow visual narration to anchor these ideas? In these three projects, and in many others exhibited in Łódź, the shots are tight, highlighting details—a contrast, an expression, a tattooed hand, another manicured. Everywhere, light embellishes the landscapes, but the threat is muted, palpable. We read it in the soldiers’ footsteps, in the arms raised to the sky, in the too-smooth perfection of architecture. It constantly indicates that we must observe, take the time to question, investigate to expose artifice while becoming aware of the ambiguities that shape humanity.
“In the fictionalized version of the performance I capture, nationalism and Catholicism are presented as central values of Polish identity… But this is only one aspect of the work. The participatory dimension, its mechanisms, and its relationship with time interest me just as much,” says Michal Sita.
Maen Hammad, for his part, refrains from transforming athletes into “pawns or symbols,” preferring “the act of bearing witness.” Nourishing his photographs with interviews, essays, and prose, he multiplies the layers to evoke the massacre through the prism of “a pursuit of freedom—not simply a metaphor, but rather a material and emotional necessity.”
Thus, through fiction, authors manage to report, to empower by suggesting rather than commanding. “The media and politics are drowning in disinformation, AI, deepfakes, and spam. The role of the camera must therefore change to summon the cultural air we breathe. I see staging, performance, and roleplaying as a way to stimulate critical thinking,” concludes Debi Cornwall.
The Photofestiwal takes place in Łódź from June 12 to 22, 2025.
