Batumi Photo Days Festival to celebrate photography, support aspiring professionals

Georgia’s seaside city of Batumi will turn into a hotspot for photography enthusiasts and aspiring professionals of the field next month with the opening of the Batumi Photo Days Festival.

Set to be held for the third time, the event has been designed this year with focus on development opportunities as much as on a showcase of photography.

It will be centred around the "se@ experience”, a "concept based on the ability to see differently, experience deeply, sea as a symbol of substance, environment, or your personal horizon”, organisers noted in their preview.

Visitors view photographs displayed at the second edition of the festival. Photo: Oleg Sinkov.

In the principal showcase, 40 participants will be selected with a single work each, with their exhibits displayed on benches along the Black Sea coastline boulevard in the city.

Organisers see the form of showcase as an conceptual installation and a highlight of the idea of the transformative power of image.

The exhibition is dedicated to individuals that affected and changed the history and those who will be in future. Remembering that one word, a small image has a power to change a lot”, their summary said.

Running along with the lead show, three other displays will be open to visitors within the spaces of Contemporary Art Space Batumi and gallery of the Adjara Art Museum.

The event was launched in 2016 as a collaboration of two seaside cities in Ukraine and Georgia. Photo: Oleg Sinkov.

Marking the significance of professional opportunities for the 2018 edition, organisers will also set up Photo Project Lab — a one-day workshop enabling participants to develop their projects.

Selected before the festival, 30 photographers will be led by professional mentors in the process, with a winner selected by an invited jury panel receiving an opportunity to have their project realised at Contemporary Art Space Batumi next year.

Finally, three nights of screenings of "outstanding examples of international photography” will welcome festival-goers and present works by photographers from Poland, Georgia and other countries.

Established in 2016, Batumi Photo Days Festival was formed as part of the Odessa/Batumi Photo Days project that brought the Ukrainian and Georgian seaside cities together in an appreciation of photographic art.

This year’s Batumi part of the project will run between August 31-September 2.