Welcome to Festival Zone for March 2025.
Festival 2025
Contemporary Auckland captured in new Commissions project
Project launched to capture and diversify Auckland’s visual heritage
Auckland Festival of Photography [Whakaahua Hākari] is proud to announce a new partnership for the 2025 Community Commissions with Auckland Council Libraries | Ngā Pataka Korero o Tāmaki Makaurau. This initiative will support Auckland-based photographers in creating contemporary works that expand and enrich the visual record of Tāmaki Makaurau.
"Auckland Festival of Photography is excited about this new partnership with Auckland Council Libraries," says AFP director and founder, Julia Durkin, MNZM. “Through these Commissions, we aim to capture diverse perspectives of our communities, ensuring Auckland’s photographic heritage is reflective of the people who live here today.”
AFP is proud to announce the recipients of the 2025 Community Commissions: Edith Amituanai, MNZM, Tuāfale Tanoa'i - the artist formerly known as Linda T, and Emily Mafile'o.
The 2025 Community Commissions will contribute to and highlight Auckland Council Libraries’ substantial Special Collections, helping to ensure that Auckland’s photographic archives better represent the city’s dynamic and evolving communities. The newly commissioned works will be produced over several months and made available later this year via the Auckland Libraries Research portal – Kura Heritage Collections Online.
“This project is an important step in broadening our photographic collections to be more inclusive of the many cultures, identities, and stories that make up Tāmaki Makaurau,” says Stacey Smith, Research and Heritage Services Manager at Auckland Council Libraries. “We are committed to ensuring our collections remain relevant and representative, providing future generations with a richer, more diverse visual history of our city.”
The new work will be available to research after June 2025. Image above: Ryan Thorpe, Dont Mind Me - Auckland Photo Blog 2013
2025 Open Call - Deadline 21st March
Get your work seen and share it in the 22nd annual Auckland Festival of Photography, we are officially open for submissions, and we are excitedly encouraging submissions from artists, educators, and curators from around the region, nation and the world until 21st March 2025.
We will be welcoming creative and insightful interpretations on the subject (for more information about our 2025 theme, click here).
Your participation can be in-venue, online, or outdoors and can include a wide variety of activities that celebrate photography and its makers. Exhibitions, talks, events, book launches, pub quizzes, performance projections and everything in between can be suggested to our Festival Trust.
The Festival serves as a gathering of cultural exchange for visual storytellers, lens-based artists, educators, students, and anyone passionate about the art form, to connect with a large and diverse audience and share lived experiences, stories, and dynamic creativity, especially during challenging times.
Our joint programme model has been in place since 2004 allowing for full creative freedoms with work presented by artists, curators, groups and dealer galleries based in New Zealand. The Festival offers an inclusive platform for creative freedom that allows independence to choose how and where they showcase their work.
Vision - Photography Connecting Communities and People
World Press Photo 2025 winners
The countdown has begun: about two weeks until the 2025 World Press Photo Contest winners are announced!
On 27 March, WPP will reveal the winning photographs, stories, and projects in each of the six regions of our contest model, selected by an independent global jury.
For the Asia Pacific Oceania region, prizes will be awarded 3 single winners, 3 stories and 1 long essay winners for the region and the regional winners go into the global contest for World Press Photo of the Year. Asia Pacific Oceania region jury, were well-equipped to place the stories into a cultural, political and social context as we assess and judge international submissions. Auckland Festival of Photography founder and CEO, Julia Durkin, MNZM had a great time and experience with other colleagues from around the Asia Pacific to select the regional singles, stories and long-term projects to proceed to the next stage.
On the regional jury were:
Learn more about the 2025 Contest, more news on the exhibition tour soon too: worldpressphoto.org/contest/2025
Closing soon at Queens Wharf, Auckland
Deep Space, NASA Exhibition; Queens Wharf Fence Exhibition
Closing this weekend, last day is 16th March 2025, at Queens Wharf — downtown by the Ferry terminal — is a selection of images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIR-Cam and transmitted about 1.5 million kilometres back to us. These images are exceptional, high resolution glimpses at the majesty and mysteries of deep space and raise questions about both the enormity of our galaxies, and humankind’s place within it. We invite you to explore these incredible photographs.
Presented exclusively by the Auckland Festival of Photography down here on earth’s Tāmaki Makaurau, thanks to Eke Panuku Development for their support.
Photobook Friday 2024 archive
Sheryl Campbell, Aotearoa Photobook Award joint winner 2022 for her Photobook droplet, launches her book Cherryblond. Opening and book launch at Skar Lab, Kingsland.
Sheryl was a feature of our speaker's, where she presented her work in her book at the 2024 Photobook Friday event, the 7th annual edition showcasing local and international photobooks. Book launch at Skar Image Lab, Kingsland 13 March, starts 5.30pm.
Talking Culture - Photobook exclusive
Auckland Festival of Photography [whakaahua hākari] is delighted to announce the attendance at Festival 2025 by Michael Itkoff, USA. Michael is a publisher, consultant, and former Chief Content Officer at Britelite Immersive. Michael Co-founded the internationally-celebrated art book publishing house, Daylight as well as content experience platform, Fabl. For over twenty years Michael has been a leader in publishing both digital and print media.
Along the way, Michael has written for the NYTimes Lens blog, Art Asia Pacific, Nueva Luz, Conscientious blog, and the Forward. Michael’s photographic and video work is in public and private collections in the United States and his work has appeared on the covers of Orion, Katalog, Next City, and Philadelphia Weekly. Michael was the recipient of the Howard Chapnick Grant for the Advancement of Photojournalism (2006), a Creative Artists Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Arts Council (2007), and a Puffin Foundation Grant (2008). Michael’s monograph Street Portraits was published by Charta Editions in 2009.
He will be joining the public programme promoting the Daylight Books collaboration with Chris Corson-Scott, NZ. Chris's work was featured by the Auckland Festival of Photography commissioned articles in China 2015, a 6-part series on New Zealand photographers published in the national publication 'Photo World'. Full 2025 Festival programme available mid-April.
Donations
Donate $20 to support the work we do; all donations are NZ tax credit eligible via our Give A Little page and can be made monthly to help keep us afloat in these challenging cost of living recessionary times.
All donations received go towards the ongoing sustainability of the annual Festival activities.
The Trust is registered with the Charities Commission No: CC38839.
WHAT HAPPENS TO MY DONATION?
The Festival team works all year-round creating opportunities so that photographers from every genre can present their new work. We provide and maintain the platform, profile and network necessary to present you with the best opportunities to inspire the imagination and showcase photography in our annual Festival.
Festival exhibitors can have the opportunity to join the 2025 community and be part of a Festival that showcases both international and national artists at diverse stages of their careers. All funds received as admin fees go towards the ongoing sustainability of the annual Festival and associated activities such as, see our 2024 end of year review.
