The theme of Festival La Gacilly-Baden Photo 2025 is AUSTRALIA & NEW WORLD and it will take place from 13 June to 12 October 2025.

30 exhibitions are dedicated to the most diverse aspects of the relationship between people and their environment. Starting from the visitor center at Brusattiplatz, the festival extends over 7 kilometers, divided into a garden route and an urban route. Embedded in public spaces, around 1,500 large-format photographs by the world’s best photographers can be seen. Admission is free.

Since its inception, our festival has been committed to repeatedly placing the nature that gives us life at the center of the exhibitions. Photographic narratives between beauty, humanistic reflection, anger and despair.

Australia, almost a hundred times the size of Austria, has a population of just under 26 million. Australian photographers are ambassadors for the beauty of a unique continent that needs to be preserved. They love their country so much that they even use poetry to denounce mistakes, and they use food – a visual signature that overflows with creativity. Their works explore the themes of identity and the environment, moving between drama, black humor, fiction and reality: Matthew Abbot, Narelle Autio, Tamara Dean, Adam Ferguson, Bobbi Lockyer, Trent Parke, Anne Zahalka, Viviane Dalles and Agence France-Presse.

In the New World, we encounter the works of Louise Johns and Joel Meyerowitz in the USA, which we juxtapose with the perspectives of Austrian Alfred Seiland. Mitch Dobrowner’s photographs bear witness to the apocalypse of extreme weather phenomena. George Steinmetz’s magnum opus “Feed The Planet” answers the question of whether the world will be able to feed 10 billion people. We also juxtapose his work with that of Dieter Bornemann, an Austrian photographer, in the form of his series ‚Aufgegessen‘ (Eaten Up). This series aims to raise awareness of the huge issue of food waste. Alessandro Cinque presents his long-term project on the consequences of mining in Andean countries. With Ulla Lohmann we travel to the volcano people of Papua New Guinea. Gaël Turine takes us to the sacred forests of Benin, where voodoo gods are considered true guardians of biodiversity.

Alice Pallot deals with the problem of green algae bloom on the Atlantic coasts, while Sophie Zenon invites us on a journey of discovery to the Breton moors. And Bernard Plossu shows large-format Fresson prints that give his landscapes an unreal look. The bilateral photo project “The Spirit of Sport” challenges schools in Morbihan and Lower Austria to photographically question whether the Olympic motto “faster, higher, stronger” is still valid in our time.

Brent Stirton will make the almost invisible visible and bring the suffering of the approximately 80,000 ME/CFS sufferers in Austria into the light of public perception. Hans-Jürgen Burkard has undertaken a musical-photographic journey for his work “An Tagen wie diesen” (On Days Like These), in which an image of Germany of enchanting power was created.

The exhibition of photographs by Lower Austrian professional photographers and the exhibition “Director’s Cut” by jury president Christie Goodwin of the world’s largest photo competition, with over 500,000 images from 170 countries – CEW It “Our World is Beautiful” – will round off the festival, as will the retrospective of 2024 in the images of artist in residence Reiner Riedler, whose images will be accompanied by texts by 2023 Thomas Jorda Prize winner Irmie Vesselsky.

The underwater photographs of “freshwater pope” Herbert Frei are dedicated to the UNESCO Global Water Summit 2025.

With the 4-week special exhibition Code of the Universe, the festival reflects on the feasibility of humanity’s largest research project at CERN in Geneva.

Another special exhibition is dedicated to Austria’s forests: 100 Years of Federal Forests.

Under the guiding theme Culture of Solidarity, the collaboration with the festival partners Garten Tulln – where we will show The Human Footprint by Gerald Mansberger and Markus Eisl – and the Month of Photography Bratislava will continue in 2025. The La Gacilly-Baden Photo festival will take place from June 13 to October 12, 2025.

More about the festival…