Photographic highlights from the La Gacilly-Baden Photo Festival took center stage on Tuesday, November 5, 2024, at vernissages as part of the Month of Photography in Bratislava.
“Humanity has opened the gates to hell,” warned Secretary-General António Guterres in an impassioned speech on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September 2023. ”Our concern is that all climate action will be dwarfed by the scale of the challenge.”
Just as Festival La Gacilly-Baden Photo, which took place from June 13 to October 13, 2024 in Baden near Vienna as the largest photography festival in Europe, took this theme into account under the motto WORLD HERITAGE, the Month of Photography in Bratislava focused on the preservation of our natural heritage in its exhibitions.
We must constantly talk about the world’s natural heritage, perhaps even more than about cultural heritage. Without the preservation of natural heritage, cultural heritage cannot exist. That is why we have chosen the protection of biodiversity and raising awareness of the consequences of climate change as the central theme of the 34th Month of Photography. We have conceived this program and selected the artists not only to highlight the apocalyptic consequences of the Anthropocene, but also to raise the environmental awareness of viewers and amaze them with the wonders of nature,” says Václav Macek, Festival Director of the Month of Photography.
Under the title “Culture of Solidarity”, the festival in Baden has been cooperating with the Month of Photography since its inception seven years ago by showing highlights of the festival in Baden in Bratislava, according to Lois Lammerhuber, Director of the La Gacilly-Baden Photo Festival.
This year, these include Martin Parr, one of the most influential photographers of our time, with a major retrospective of his work; one of the most important Austrian photographers of the interwar period, Rudolf Koppitz, whose style and innovative power had an international influence on the photography of subsequent generations; the American photographer Beth Moon with her gigantic, “immortal” trees; Brazilian photographer Cássio Vasconcellos, whose collages of thousands of aerial images of landfill sites in São Paulo and airplane graveyards in the USA are intended to make us think about the way we consume; Images from orbit, prepared by Gerald Mansberger and Markus Eisl, which impressively show the human footprint on the earth; and the traveling exhibition Code of the Universe – an exhibition in cooperation with CERN, the world’s largest laboratory for particle physics in Geneva, which is shown outdoors.
34. Month of Photography
Bratislava
1. – 30. November 2024
https://mesiacfotografie.eu/