In Hamburg, eleven exhibitions spread across eight institutions offer this summer a demanding and sensitive photographic journey, placed under the sign of encountering the other.
In Hamburg, photography ceases to be a mere mirror of reality, becoming instead a living, unstable, almost unruly entity. With the 9th Photography Triennial, entitled Alliance, Infinity, Love – in the Face of the Other , the image no longer simply shows: it acts, connects, disturbs, and engages. Orchestrated by London-based artistic director Mark Sealy, this 2026 edition is less a juxtaposition of exhibitions than an ongoing reflection on what it means to look—and to be looked at—today. Photography is considered here as a language imbued with ethics, capable of raising questions of responsibility, justice, and humanity.
The triptych that structures the event — Alliance, Infinity, Love — might seem abstract. But it is very concretely embodied in images that explore the body, relationships, and the space between presence and disappearance.
In Joke Reichel's In der Kind-Asana (2024), presented as part of Cocktail Prolongé , the special section dedicated to F. C. Gundlach at the Deichtorhallen, the body appears curled in on itself, lying on the ground in an almost fetal position. Photographed in black and white from above, it becomes a compact, almost anonymous form, its soft contours contrasting with the roughness of the surface. No face, no gaze—only a human mass reduced to its volume, to its vulnerability. The image imposes a silence. It evokes both withdrawal and protection, but also a kind of erasure, as if the body were seeking to withdraw from the world.
This relationship to the body as a fragile territory finds an echo in Mario Cravo Neto's Odé (1989), featured in the central exhibition at the Deichtorhallen Contemporary Art Hall. The scene is frontal, almost ritualistic. A face emerges from the shadows, but its eyes are entirely concealed by a white bird—a duck or goose—held firmly against it in a single hand. The animal's gentleness, the tension in the hand, the absence of a gaze: the bird becomes both mask and mediator, blurring the boundaries between human and other, between what is shown and what remains hidden. The gesture is delicate, yet it carries a disturbing ambiguity—as if intimacy always contained an element of the unknown.
With F. C. Gundlach's Jet Age (1963), on view at the Bucerius Kunst Forum as part of the exhibition You'll Never Watch Alone —which opened on May 8, ahead of the Triennale, and is not to be missed before August 16—the subject matter shifts without losing any of its power. An elegant young woman stands before the massive jet engines of an airplane. The black and white plays on contrasts of scale: the slender, controlled human figure against the raw power of the engines. Everything here evokes an era fascinated by progress and speed. Yet, behind this aesthetic of modernity, something resists. The body seems almost constrained by the setting, caught in a mise-en-scène that transcends it.
These three works, despite their profound differences, share a common quality: they defy immediate interpretation. They compel us to slow down, to reconsider. The body is never simply represented—it is fragmented, subjected to pressure, sometimes erased. This is where the Triennial finds its coherence. Not in a linear discourse, but in a constellation of viewpoints that question our way of seeing. Photography appears here as a space of relationship: between self and other, between visibility and withdrawal, between memory and projection.
What is striking as you move through the exhibition is the impossibility of remaining detached. Looking at an image here is tantamount to involvement. Each photograph implies a stance, a responsibility—and reminds us that seeing is never neutral. A certain gentleness nevertheless pervades the whole, like a persistent attempt at connection. Photography then becomes less a tool of capture than a meeting place. In a world saturated with visuals, some images continue to resist—and to look back at us.
Practical information
9th Hamburg Photography Triennial — Alliance, Infinity, Love – in the Face of the Other From June 5 to September 22, 2026 — eight museums and art institutions in Hamburg
Bucerius Kunst Forum, Rathausmarkt 2, Hamburg F. C. Gundlach. You'll Never Watch Alone — until August 16, 2026
Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Deichtorstraße 1-2, Hamburg Extended Cocktail. F. C. Gundlach special and central exhibition Alliance, Infinity, Love — until September 22, 2026
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, Steintorplatz 1, Hamburg Sara Sallam — Care. Reconsidering Photography — until January 10, 2027
Website: phototriennale.de/en
Instagram: @phototriennale
