The Icelandic Photo Festival 2022

The Icelandic Photography Festival (TIPF) is an international festival held January of every other year. The festival was first held in 2012 (under the name “Photography Days”). The Festival’s main objective is to support and advance the photographic medium as an art form. The festival’s program includes photographic exhibitions with international and Icelandic artists, portfolio review, lectures, and photo book presentations.

The portfolio review is hosted by the Reykjavik Museum of Photography, which invites international as well as local museum directors, curators and professionals in the industry to the event. The co-directors of TIPF are Katrín Elvarsdóttir and Pétur Thomsen.

This year’s participating venues are:

The Reykjavík Museum of Photography, presenting the exhibition Random Moments of photographs from their over 6.5 million image collection juxtaposed with snippets of texts from printed publications. The images are selected via keywords through the museum’s algorithm, creating surprising collections of images only linked by a single word.

The National Museum of Iceland, with the exhibitions Straumnes by Marinó Thorlacious which documents the remains of a radar station erected by the US in Straumnesfjall during the Cold War and now taken over by nature, and Roses grew on snow by Vassilis Triantis – an homage to the life and work of his parents-in-law who grew roses in the village Laugarás.

The National Gallery of Iceland shows the exhibition Staged Moments of photographic works from the museum’s collection from the 1970s to present day.

Gerðarsafn – Kopavogur Art Museum, presenting Ad Infinitum – an inmersive, site-specific installation by artist Elín Hansdóttir and musician Úlfur Hansson, and 08-18 (Past Perfect) – an exhibition of photographic and moving-image works by Santiago Mostyn focusing on sites from across the globe of personal significance for the artist.

Hafnarborg Center of Culture and Fine Art, with the exhibition A Few Thoughts on Photography – Vol. III by Hallgerður Hallgrímsdóttir which connects our everyday three dimensional experience of the world with the way in which photography captures and translates it into a two dimensional static form.

Hlöðuloftið Korpúlfsstöðum, which brings together works from FíSL, The Icelandic Contemporary Photography Association, and their sister organisation Pohjoinen valokuvakeskus in Oulu – Finland, for the collective exhibition Hérna.

RAMskram Gallery exhibits photographs taken in Iceland by Kristín Sigurðardóttir and ones taken at the thermal fields of New Zealand by Jim Ramer for the show Transit, bringing together two opposite worlds through images which share a conceptual goal of capturing the unseen perimeter of vision.

Gallery Port shows The Silvercage, a new work by Hjördís Eyþórsdóttir, and 518 aukanætur by Eva Schram – a series of photographs of the Icelandic Highlands taken on expired film.

Ásmundarsalur, presenting the exhibition Airtight by Klængur Gunnarsson and Hrafn Hólmfríðarson Jónsson, musing over the possibilities of everyday life and dealings with limitations, boredom, the mundane.

and BERG Contemporary with the exhibition About Time – Diary of Twenty Months by Einar Falur Ingólfsson, which started as an 18-month visual diary of his travels to Varanasi, Rome, and Egypt – destinations specifically selected for the way in which they have historically been key to shaping contemporary Western society including the artist’s native Iceland. As the project was nearing it’s end the COVID pandemic struck, extending the diary and greatly influencing it.

The Icelandic Photo Festival 2022 takes place from the 13th of January to the 27th of March.