Launched in October 2012, the FotoFocus Biennial is a regional, month-long celebration of photography and lens-based art in Cincinnati, Ohio. The Biennial brings together the community to celebrate October as the Month of Photography. Biennial 2022 —
The next FotoFocus Biennial will take place in October 2022 with a new theme. The Program Week is scheduled for Thursday, September 29 – Saturday, October 8, 2022. Biennial 2020 — light&
In lieu of presenting the fifth FotoFocus Biennial, light&, FotoFocus has pledged its 2020 Biennial budget to financially support the region’s art community during the coronavirus pandemic. FotoFocus will give an Emergency Art Grant in the amount of $800,000 to over 100 Participating Venues and Partners that were selected to present as part of the 2020 FotoFocus Biennial. Biennial 2018 — Open Archive
The 2018 FotoFocus Biennial encompasses more than 90 projects at museums and galleries across Greater Cincinnati, Northern Kentucky, Dayton, and Columbus, and features more than 400 artists, curators, and educators—the largest of its kind in America. The theme is Open Archive—emphasizing the centrality of photography and lens-based art to modernism, and examining our fundamental need to preserve photographs and to tell stories through their collection, organization, and interpretation. Biennial 2016 — Photography, the Undocument
Featuring over 60 exhibitions and over 100 FotoFocus events at Participating Venues, the 2016 Biennial included eight major exhibitions curated by FotoFocus Artistic Director and Curator Kevin Moore exploring the documentary nature of photography, including solo exhibitions of Roe Ethridge, Zanele Muholi, and Jackie Nickerson. The Biennial Program included four days of events, lectures, and screenings. The Participating Venues took diverse approaches to the theme: Photography, the Undocument, which seeks to break apart assumptions about photography’s documentary character by emphasizing the medium’s natural tendency to distort and reshape the visible world.
Biennial 2014 — Photography in Dialogue
The second edition of the Biennial, hosted in October of 2014, included six original exhibitions curated by FotoFocus, the premiere of the FotoFocus ArtHub, as well as exhibitions by 54 participating venues throughout the region. The FotoFocus featured programming included five days of lectures, panel dis-cussions, screenings, and performances with curators, critics, and art world professionals, all focused on one common theme: Photography in Dialogue. FotoFocus welcomed over 115,000 visitors to the Biennial.
Biennial 2012 — People. In October of 2012 the FotoFocus Biennial became the region’s first event to bring together 64 venues to simultaneously present contemporary and historical photography, as well as artistic and educational programing. The inaugural event welcomed 63,000 visitors to the FotoFocus Biennial 2012.
