PHOTO IS:RAEL
International Photography Festival 2025

Enav Cultural Center & Gan Ofer
Ibn Gabirol St. 71, Tel-Aviv
Tel Aviv ׀ November 19-29, 2025

PHOTO IS:RAEL, a non-profit organization, promoting the art of photography in Israel and around the world, with a vision toward“a better society through the language of photography.” The pinnacle of our annual activity is the International Photography Festival – a major arts event that attracts tens of thousands of visitors each year. This year, we celebrate the festival’s 12th season.

Voices

Artistic Director: Eyal Landsman

This year’s festival theme – “Voices” – invites us to take a penetrating look into the tangled fabric of the visual age in which we live. A culture of silence is becoming increasingly entrenched: the boundaries of freedom of expression are blurring, the ability to listen is diminishing, and the suffering of the “Other” is pushed to the margins of public discourse. However, alongside the conscious silencing there is the constant, overwhelming and uncontrollable noise of information pulses, replacing genuine conversation with echo and dulling the voice of reason.
In such a world, it is no longer sufficient to simply acknowledge that we have lost our voice. The time has come to act. Through photography, we aim to reclaim our ability to speak – and to listen. To challenge both silencing and confusion. To offer an image that is simultaneously a testament, a question, and an invitation to dialogue.
The festival foregrounds the ongoing tension between forces of objectification and the pursuit of subjectivity. The works on display focus on this tension, revealing the mechanisms through which silence is enforced – and at the same time, attempting to undermine it. The artists examine their role as political activists: is it possible to give voice to those whose voice has been taken from them, without dictating it anew? Is the representation of the “Other” possible – and if so, under what conditions? The works seek to expose the tension between giving voice and appropriating it. They dwell not only on the one who speaks – but also on the one who listens.
The works on display seek to free voices from the shackles of colonialism – voices of unique traditions, of peoples and communities, of geographical and psychic landscapes; voices of women, of those who are not white, of those living on the margins of society; and also the most intimate voices – the voices of the body, the heart, the memory and the soul.
In many ways, freeing voices means breathing, shouting, fighting, singing, speaking and murmuring in order to reclaim for ourselves the ability to make ourselves heard and to be heard. A voice is always distinct, private and unique. Only when the voice is heard, is it truly liberated.
And listening? It has the power to heal, to connect and, sometimes, even to resist.