In May, as part of the PhotoArtDoc 2026 festival's spring program, a series of online meetings with practicing artists and researchers is taking place. Using examples from real-life artistic experiences, we will discuss how to develop long-term projects, work with archives, find visual meaning in an age of image overload, and understand historical context through the lens of personal perspective.
Schedule and meeting topics:
May 5th – artist talk with Maria Elena Bonet
Maria will talk about the transformation of her method—from early analog series (“Tanka”, “Déjà vu”) to large-scale multimedia projects (“My River,” “Betrothal to the Sea”) and the recent premiere “Tu sei il Giardino” in the Italian castle Rocca Janula. The discussion will cover how to combine photography, historical printmaking techniques, video, and sculpture, and why art remains a space for personal autonomy today.
May 14 — artist talk with Alena Kardash «Personal narrative in long-term projects»
We will focus on three documentary stories by Alena Kardash. The focus is on the author's experience with memory: how family archives and private pasts transform external observation into a multilayered statement. This is an opportunity to explore the line between a personal document and a larger story, and how the author's personal perspective imbues the project with a depth that is impossible to imitate.
May 20 – Alexander Veledimovich, artist-talk and lecture «The route of imagination»
A practical and philosophical answer to the most complex question: what to shoot in a world where image creation has become instantaneous and commonplace? Using his own work and the projects of famous photographers as examples, Alexander will demonstrate that meaningful series are born not from ready-made answers, but from the process of exploration itself, where the endpoint is not initially defined.
May 25 - lecture by Andrey Dureyko «Around Düsseldorf, around photography»
The focus of the lecture is the Düsseldorf School of Photography (Düsseldorfer Fotoschule), conceptual art, and typology theory. Andrey will analyze how this phenomenon changed world art and how Belarusian artists interacted with its representatives and the challenge of technological optics – the desire to objectively capture the world through a lens.
In parallel with the public lectures, the festival's internal program is taking place – a series of closed online meetings with curators and artists, aimed at participants of the PhotoArtDoc 2026 mentorship program.