Under Pressure: The Official Theme of the Sarajevo Photography Festival 2026

Pressure today is no longer an exception, but a condition. It emerges not only through political realities, wars, migration, or ecological crises, but also permeates everyday life, embedding itself in the body, in the ways we see, remember, and exist. The theme Under Pressure does not seek to define this phenomenon, but rather to trace its various manifestations — as a tension between staying and leaving, between the visible and the suppressed, between the personal and the collective.

Within this space, the notion of home emerges as one of the central sites of pressure. It is at once a physical and emotional framework, yet also something deeply fragile, easily destabilised by historical and social circumstances. Experiences of displacement, constant movement, and the impossibility of rootedness extend beyond geopolitics to become internal conditions — forms of ongoing instability that shape the subject itself.

Alongside this, the archive appears as another important field of tension. Whether through personal records, fragments of memory, or materials bearing witness to collective trauma, the archive is never neutral. It becomes a site of negotiation between what is remembered and what remains outside visibility. In this context, photography functions not merely as documentation, but as an active participant in the construction of meaning, often exposing fractures within official narratives.

Pressure is equally inscribed onto the body — through its representations and the ways it is displayed, regulated, or emancipated. Between social norms and personal autonomy, the body becomes both a site of resistance and vulnerability, a space where broader social structures are refracted through intimate experience.

At the same time, loss and absence introduce another form of pressure — one that does not originate from the external world, but from the persistence of relationships that endure even after physical disappearance. Here, photography acts as a medium that both preserves and transforms, allowing what has been lost to continue existing in another form.

In an era defined by the accelerated production and consumption of images, additional pressure arises from the very nature of the contemporary visual environment. Images disappear before they are fully absorbed; meanings are formed and dissolved almost simultaneously. In contrast, the works gathered within this theme slow down the gaze, insisting on duration and on the possibility of revisiting and rereading the image anew.

Under Pressure does not offer resolution. Instead, it establishes a space in which pressure becomes visible as a complex and often contradictory phenomenon. It is precisely within this uncertainty — within the impossibility of stabilising meaning into a single interpretation — that space opens for understanding, not as a conclusion, but as an ongoing process.

Within the context of the fifth edition of the Sarajevo Photography Festival, this theme acquires an additional dimension of continuity and responsibility. Over the years, the festival has evolved into a platform that not only reflects contemporary developments in photography, but actively participates in shaping them. In this sense, Under Pressure signifies not only the condition of the contemporary world, but also a call for persistence in creation, for preserving spaces of reflection, and for sustaining belief in photography as a medium that, despite pressure, retains the capacity to speak, to bear witness, and to endure.