KYOTOGRAPHIE, the Photographer’s Eye

The 2026 edition, which runs from April 18 to May 18, bears the theme EDGE (limits). With international participation, focusing on the African continent, the festival explores the meaning of "limits", be they geographical, social, emotional or perceptual.

This also applies to photography. Since its beginnings, this medium has lived on the margins, oscillating between documentation and art, truth and fiction. Today, in a world saturated with images and in the throes of technological change, photography finds itself at a pivotal point in its history: a space where uncertainty and excitement mingle.

Beyond this "EDGE", no one knows what lies ahead. Are we on the brink of chaos, or is this threshold a gateway to another world?

From April 12 to May 11, 2025, the theme Humanity set the tone for this new edition. Through the works of 13 artists from a dozen countries, the festival invited us to reflect on what binds us together: love, empathy, resilience, identity and human relationships.

Exhibitions took place in some fifteen historic and unusual locations around Kyoto, creating a dialogue between images and local architecture. Among the highlights was the monumental installation Chronicles of Kyoto by French artist JR, featuring over 500 portraits of the city's inhabitants, making visible its social and cultural diversity.

From April 13 to May 12, 2024, KYOTOGRAPHIE presented its ''SOURCE'' edition, a call to rethink the origin, the beginning and the primary energy of creation.

This edition presented 13 exhibitions in emblematic Kyoto locations, combining tradition and innovation, with a scenography designed to bring the works closer to the public and question what underlies our gaze.

For its eleventh edition, KYOTOGRAPHIE has chosen to highlight the theme "BORDERS". Encompassing the multiplicity in the broadest sense that this theme allows, the exhibition goes in search of all these borders, be they physical, temporary, ephemeral or transparent.

Inseparable from our existence, they shape and frame our personal experience, as well as our relationships with others. And so, through the many photographs produced by artists from all over the world, we are led to consider the place we give to these invisible borders: they protect us and our territory, but they also divide, discriminate and differentiate us from one another.

With the 2023 season, Kyotographie's founders play on the ambiguity of plural worlds. Each artist presents his or her own interpretation of borders: between parallel worlds, generation gaps, fundamental differences in human rights and much more!

An exhibition to be discovered from April 14 to May 14, 2023 throughout Kyoto!

The latest edition, 2022, is symbolic in the history of KYOTOGRAPHIE, as it celebrates the festival's 10th anniversary. Created around the theme "ONE", this edition has a double interpretation. "ONE", meaning "one" in French, evokes the uniqueness of each person, the individuality and characteristics that make them unique.

The 2022 edition is also intended to highlight the expression "One is Ten". More than just a play on words in keeping with the tenth anniversary, "One is Ten" denotes the collective aspect that is created when individualities come together and add up to form one. "One" would then represent uniqueness, while "Ten" would be a marker of the collective within which each individual forms a whole.

More than ever, this double interpretation makes sense in the light of recent global conflicts. With this edition, founders Lucille Reyboz and Yusuke Nakanishi wanted to show that no singularity, no life, deserved to be sacrificed "in the name of a totalitarian cause that falsely claims to be representative of the whole."

Some photos here, highlighting the uniqueness of each individual in a collective dimension.

the 9th edition of the festival, "ECHO" represents the influence of the past on the present. 2021 marked the second year of Covid-19 and its impact on societies around the world, as well as the tenth anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that caused the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. Both of these events provide food for thought about the role played by mankind on its environment in recent years.

Through the exhibitions on display, the idea is to encourage reflection on mankind's role in the recurrence of disasters, and to raise awareness of what needs to be changed. Lucille Reyboz and Yusuke Nakanishi insist here: "The history of the past, which until now has not listened to the cry of the earth, echoes (responds) to the present."

The aim, then, is to provoke thought through photographs that show the impact of the past on the present.

Discover "ECHO", the differences between past and present, and the influence one has on the other!

"Vision" is an edition set in a particular context: the beginnings of the Covid-19 epidemic.

How did the "Vision" theme come about? Faced with such a particular situation, the organizers wanted to show that changing our vision of things and our environment was necessary before we could change our world. The idea was to present, through photography, different visions and perspectives that might be open to us in the long term.

This eighth edition of KYOTOGRAPHIE is one of the first to bring such depth to its conception and relationship with the world. KYOTOGRAPHIE 2020 is all about being optimistic about awakening people's consciences by highlighting a realistic vision of the world.

Lucille Reyboz and Yusuke Nakanishi compare our narrow vision of the world to myopia: seeing up close (short-term) with great difficulty in seeing far away (the future).

The seventh edition of KYOTOGRAPHIE, centered around the word "VIBE" ran from April 13 to May 12, 2019. These vibes, which can be both positive and negative, invade us at every moment of our daily lives and have an impact on our experiences. The 2019 exhibitions have been designed around this theme. Understanding, through art, how the "vibe" around a moment can influence its perception, its memory, but also the emotions felt is a unique and atypical experience.

The works have been displayed throughout the city, in historic locations such as Nijo Castle and the Ryosokuin Buddhist temple, as well as in modern buildings such as the Horikawa Oike gallery and the y gion reception hall.

Works by Weronika Gęsicka, Albert Watson and Ismaïl Bahri, to name but a few, were exhibited with a specific aim for this seventh edition: to make the invisible visible by attempting to represent the different variations of the "vibe".

The sixth edition of the Franco-Japanese KYOTOGRAPHIE festival had "UP" as its theme. The idea is to take a step up, to approach things from a different perspective, both in thought and action. Whether it's sport, demonstrations, the fight against global warming or simply self-perception... in every case, taking the high ground can revolutionize things.

With this idea of changing oneself and changing the world, "UP" has been ahead of the curve in preparing the 2020 edition, with both themes coming together under a common guideline: approaching life differently.

The 5th edition of KYOTOGRAPHIE celebrated love through photography. With "LOVE", artists and visitors were invited to think of photography as a love affair with life, because love connects us to others, to nature, but also to everything that surrounds us. Although unique to each individual, the vision of love can be expanded and rediscovered through art: that was the aim of this year's event.

The spotlight was on 16 exhibitions centered on sharing different visions of love and diversity, through the intimate eyes of each photographer. To create a real moment of connection, the festival offered MasterClasses with two world-renowned photographers: Zalene Muholi and Isabel Muñoz. These moments of sharing with the artists enabled everyone to expand their vision of love.