From 5 June, the Belfast Photo Festival 2025 will showcase works by Polish artists: Diana Lelonek, Anna Zagrodzka, Karol Szymkowiak, and Dyba & Adam Lach. A series of exhibitions, events, and screenings exploring the evolving landscape of Polish ecology and society will be presented under the title “Metamorphosis”. This presentation, staged in key locations across Belfast city centre, is made possible through the support of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute. These events form part of the UK/Poland Season 2025.
Belfast Photo Festival 2025 – “Biosphere” Edition
The Belfast Photo Festival is the largest international festival of photography and visual culture in Great Britain and Ireland. This year’s 11th edition, held under the theme “Biosphere”, will present the work of a diverse group of artists across ten exhibitions and more than twelve events in Belfast and throughout Northern Ireland.
Several of the exhibitions are the result of collaborations between photographers – including Polly Garnett, Joe Laverty, Yvette Monahan, Chad Alexander, and Helio León – and environmental organisations and local communities in Northern Ireland. The artists aim to visualise the fragility and beauty of the region’s natural heritage, with a particular focus on Lough Neagh, the peatlands, marine areas, the Belfast Hills, and the temperate rainforests.
Anna Zagrodzka „Alternaria Alternata”. Fot. press materials.
The festival offers an opportunity to explore a diverse range of works and projects that interrogate how we perceive and inhabit the Earth. The exhibitions, situated in public spaces across Belfast and beyond, will run from 5 to 30 June 2025. They will be accompanied by a programme of partner exhibitions, talks, workshops, and screenings. The Belfast Photo Festival is supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast City Council, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Fluxus, and Alexander Boyd Displays.
“Metamorphosis” – Questions About a Dynamically Changing Environment
“Metamorphosis” is a series of exhibitions, events, and film screenings featuring works by Polish artists – Diana Lelonek, Anna Zagrodzka, Karol Szymkowiak, and Dyba and Adam Lach – on view as part of the Belfast Photo Festival from 5 June 2025. “Metamorphosis” is supported by Fotofestiwal Łódź.
Olga Brzezińska, Deputy Director of the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, said:
“Photography, at its best, is not just a way of seeing the world — it’s a way of transforming it. The Polish artists presented at this year’s Belfast Photo Festival confront us with powerful, unsettling, and deeply poetic reflections on memory, ecology, and the politics of presence and absence. Their work speaks to our time — a time of planetary fragility and urgent reimaginings. We are proud to support this dialogue between Polish visual culture and Northern Irish landscapes, where art becomes a lens through which we can reframe both history and the future.”
Karol Szymkowiak „0169-8629 5223-01750”. Fot. press materials.
Diana Lelonek’s exhibition, “Centre for Living Things”, will open at Belfast City Hall on 9 June 2025. As part of her pata-institution – an artistic practice that emerges from a sense of fatigue with traditional institutions and positions itself in opposition to them – Lelonek explores the relationships between humans and other species. Her projects serve as a critical response to overproduction, unchecked growth, and prevailing attitudes towards the environment. Combining photography, living matter, and found objects, Lelonek creates interdisciplinary works that often operate at the intersection of art and science.
Anna Zagrodzka will present her project “Alternaria Alternata”, on view at the Botanical Gardens from 5 June 2025. Her photographs offer a compelling perspective on the spaces and microcosms of former Nazi concentration camps. The project addresses themes of institutional violence, dehumanisation, trauma, testimony, and the commemoration of victims – through research, particularly in the field of microbiology. In addition, a selection of photobooks curated by Fotofestiwal Łódź will be available at the Botanical Gardens.
Karol Szymkowiak, in his work entitled “0169-8629 5223-01750”, offers an unconventional perspective on Lake Powidzkie, the cleanest lake in Poland. At the same time, in its immediate vicinity lies the largest military airbase in the country – a strategic site regarded as the primary nuclear target in the event of a global conflict. The project will be on display at Hustle Coffee from 5 June 2025.
Meanwhile, on 23 June 2025, the Queen’s Film Theatre will host a screening of “Sowing the Seeds of the Wild”, a film by Dyba and Adam Lach. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with the director and will mark the official opening of the “Metamorphosis” programme. “Sowing the Seeds of the Wild” poses profound questions about the freedom of rivers and people, the relationship between humans and nature, the interconnectedness of ecosystems, and the presence of wildness within each of us. Distressed by the degradation of his beloved river, a musician embarks on a 1,300-kilometre journey in a traditional wooden boat, symbolically reclaiming wildness in its name. For 40 days, he immerses himself in the natural world with extraordinary mindfulness – listening to the primal sounds of the river and momentarily leaving behind the noise of everyday life.
Still from „Sowing the Seeds of the Wild” movie by Dyba and Adam Lach. Fot. press materials.
These events form part of the UK/Poland 2025 cultural season, organised by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, the Polish Cultural Institute, and the British Council.
UK/Poland Season 2025 – A New Chapter in Relations between Poland and the UK
The UK/Poland Season 2025 features over one hundred events across film, theatre, visual arts, design, literature, and music, taking place in dozens of cities throughout Poland, Great Britain, and Northern Ireland. The Polish programme launched on 5 March in Łódź with the exhibition “St Ives and Elsewhere”, while the British season was inaugurated on 6 March during the Kinoteka Festival at the British Film Institute cinema in London. The programme will run until the end of November 2025. Its aim is to stimulate dialogue, deepen cooperation, and strengthen artistic and social ties.
Events in Poland are organised and financed by the British Council, the Adam Mickiewicz Institute, and the Polish Cultural Institute. The British Council is also responsible for the programme in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The organisation of the Season in Great Britain and Northern Ireland has been supported by Poland’s Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.