Xposure 2026 — A Week Inside the World's Largest Photography Festival
Photo: Colin Baldwin
Every January, the Xposure International Photography Festival turns a stretch of Sharjah into what might be the densest concentration of photographic work on the planet. For its tenth edition — held January 29 through February 4, 2026, under the theme A Decade of Visual Storytelling — the festival brought together more than 420 photographers, filmmakers, and visual artists from over 60 countries. Ninety-five exhibitions. Over 3,200 artworks. A temporary venue covering more than half a million square feet. Large enough to get thoroughly lost in — which happened more than once, and it hardly mattered, because every wrong turn led to another exhibition worth stopping for.
This year, an invitation arrived to exhibit a solo show. For a fine art photographer working from the Åland Islands, the scale of Xposure is something else entirely.
Organised by the Sharjah Government Media Bureau, and curator Simon Newton, Xposure is structured around thematic zones rather than a traditional exhibition layout: photojournalism, documentary, nature and wildlife, conservation, travel, portraiture, and fine art each occupy their own dedicated space. The 2026 edition introduced Athens as its first-ever Guest of Honour, held a Conservation Summit on ocean ecosystems, screened 66 films, and received a record 29,000 photography submissions. Pulitzer Prize winners exhibit alongside emerging talent. Frontline photojournalists share the grounds with fine art practitioners. The result is less a series of galleries and more an entire visual culture compressed into one week — and for such a massive event, remarkably well organised. The team behind Xposure took excellent care of every detail, making the stay genuinely comfortable.
Photo: Colin Baldwin
Alternature
The solo exhibition Alternature was presented in the Fine Art and Creative Expression Zone, featuring around 30 works drawn from three ongoing series: We Are Nature, Doubled Days, and Jarred & Displaced. Layered portraits, spontaneous daily studies, and childhood landscapes preserved inside glass jars — different approaches to the same question, held together by the multiple exposure as a way of seeing.
Alternature is a living project. New works are created continuously, and each presentation is shaped by the space and context it enters. The Xposure edition was not identical to the 2024 showing at Ålands Konstmuseum — the core series remains, but the selection evolves.
Being placed alongside photographers like Hengki Koentjoro, Cath Simard, Julian Calverley, Christian Houge, and Søren Solkær felt both challenging and right. Fine art occupied a distinct but respected corner of a festival otherwise dominated by documentary and journalistic work.
Photo: Colin Baldwin
Photo: Colin Baldwin
Photo: Colin Baldwin
Photo: Colin Baldwin
The encounters that matter
The real value of a festival this size is not any single exhibition. It is the collisions between them. Conversations that start at one show and continue over coffee with someone whose work occupies a completely different world. Over the course of the week, connections were formed with photographers like Liam Man, Hengki Koentjoro, Ana Backhaus, Bob Miller — who went on to win the Visual Storytelling award — Tarik Khoja, Søren Solkær, and many others. These are the encounters that shift how you think about your own work. Not through critique or instruction, but through proximity to people who approach visual storytelling from entirely different starting points.
For anyone considering attending a future edition — whether as an exhibiting photographer, a student, or simply someone curious about visual culture — Xposure is worth the trip. The next edition will take place in early 2027. Details at xposure.net.