Alliance, Infinity, Love –
in the Face of the Other

The 9th Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2026, titled Alliance, Infinity, Love – in the Face of the Other, celebrates the creative potential of Alliance, Infinity, and Love, while calling for responsibility towards the Other.

The festival seeks to amplify a broad spectrum of photographic voices —established and emerging, visible and overlooked — that challenge dominant narratives, reclaim forgotten perspectives, and foster dialogue across social and cultural divides. According to Mark Sealy, photography is not regarded as a neutral recording device, but as an “intimate companion”: a medium for sharing the sacred, the vulnerable, and the deeply human.

Whilst acknowledging that photography has long been entangled with systems of control and oppression – shaping how people, histories, and cultures are seen and categorised – the festival honours its potential to evoke emotion, unsettle norms, and reveal what often remains unseen. In this spirit, the photographic image becomes a space of communion and critical reflection. 

The conceptual point of departure of the 9th Triennial is the iconic song Nature Boy (1948), born from the artistic alliance — between African-American jazz musician Nat King Cole and eden ahbez, a proto-hippie and outsider poet. The song’s gentle yet radical message about love and humanity serves as both poetic and political reference for the 9th Triennial. Together with the critical writings of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas — whose central thesis lies in the recognition of the Other — this forms the creative and theoretical foundation for this festival edition.

Alliance, in this sense, speaks about the power of coexistance through the recognition of difference. The festival brings together diverse, divergent, and in-between voices in photography, creating a space to explore “the familiar and the unfamiliar” within cultural production — particularly in relation to rights and representation.

Infinity reflects the boundless possibilities of being human and the infinite capacity for acts of kindness. It gestures towards the infinite realities we inhabit and evokes the longing for a new visual paradigm – one that enables silenced voices to become an integral part of our common, interconnected reality, where restrictive borders dissolve and liberating futures can be imagined.

Love, as theorised by author bell hooks, is not understood as a romantic feeling but as a deliberate and politically effective act — an active force that moves against fear and alienation. Within this curatorial vision, love becomes a motor for change in photography: a departure from visual practices rooted in systems of oppression, towards photography as an act of community and cultural reparation.