More than 700 photographers capture stories of conflict, culture, identity and life around the world.
6–29 November 2026
Bondi Beach Promenade | Bondi Pavilion | Paddington Reservoir Gardens
Head On Photo Festival, Australia’s leading international photography event, returns for its 17th year this November with 93 free exhibitions and more than 700 photographic artists from over 30 countries.
Taking place across Sydney, Head On’s 2026 program is anchored by major Featured Program exhibitions at Bondi Beach promenade, Bondi Pavilion and Paddington Reservoir Gardens, spanning conflict and migration, intimate portraiture, Australian identity, body image, childhood, climate change and playful experiments in how we see the world.
“Photography has an extraordinary ability to take us somewhere we may never otherwise go, or make us look differently at something we see every day,” said Head On Photo Festival Director Moshe Rosenzveig OAM.
“This year we’re bringing together photographers from more than 30 countries, documenting everything from conflict, migration and displacement to identity, humour and everyday life. What connects them is the human story behind the image.
“Head On is about discovery. We want people to encounter photographs and stories they weren’t expecting, to stop and look, and hopefully walk away seeing the world a little differently.”
Among the major international highlights is ICE – broken families by American photojournalist Carol Guzy, the first journalist to win four Pulitzer Prizes. Photographed in New York in 2025, the series follows asylum seekers detained by masked ICE agents after immigration court hearings, documenting the impact on children, families and immigrant communities amid the deeply divided debate over US immigration policy.
With extremely rare access inside war-torn Sudan, British photographer Giles Clarke made three journeys through the country over 18 months for Sudan: in time of war , documenting the conflict and the lives of those caught within it from eastern Sudan to Khartoum, Omdurman and North Darfur.
My people in Gaza by award-winning Palestinian photojournalist Abdelrahman Alkahlout documents the experiences of civilians in Gaza through images of daily life, displacement and conflict. Alkahlout, winner of the 2025 Head On Exposure Award, has photographed life in Gaza since 2014.
Away from the frontline, acclaimed French photographer Veronique Vial offers a revealing look at celebrity in Before ten am . Photographing famous subjects at home in the morning, before the performance of public life begins, Vial set out to capture them at their most unguarded.
In Seen/ Unseen: the migrant children , Chinese-American photographer Tianqiutao Chen combines his portraits of Beijing’s migrant children with photographs taken by the children themselves, offering two perspectives on lives often unseen.
Swedish-born, Los Angeles-based photographer Julia SH challenges conventional representations of the female body in Body of Work , presenting larger and underrepresented bodies with the presence and dignity of classical sculpture.
Portuguese photographer Jorge Ferreira brings a playful shift in perspective with Hybrid Bodies , using overlapping bodies, heads and planes to create strange new figures from everyday street scenes. Shot entirely through perspective and observation, the series blurs bodies and identities in unexpected ways.
Australian photographers feature prominently across the 2026 program, with stories spanning regional Australia, Sydney after dark and the red dirt of Western Australia.
In Australian Lustre , Trent Mitchell draws on childhood holidays, family history and 15 years of photography to explore regional Australia and the rituals, landscapes and contradictions that shape national identity. The series moves between nostalgia and a more complicated family history, including Mitchell’s First Fleet ancestry.
Sydney photojournalist Glenn Lockitch revisits the city after dark in TAXI! Sunset to sunrise , a series of colour-film portraits of passengers he photographed while driving a taxi between 2003 and 2009. The taxi became his travelling studio, capturing strangers, conversations and Sydney’s nocturnal pulse.
In The Revivalists , Sydney photographer Joe Kennedy travels more than 7,000 kilometres to the Western Australian outback to document the Red Dust Revival, where vintage motorsport enthusiasts gather every three years with machines up to a century old. His portraits, track photography and still lifes capture the people keeping early Australian motorsport culture alive.
Other Australian highlights include Michele Aboud’s The Puppeteers , portraits of the artists behind Erth Visual & Physical Inc.; James Farr’s Faces of the Outback , portraits of First Nations men from remote Australia; Daniel Mead’s Spectrum ; David Niu’s Between Worlds ; and the WA Life Photo Awards, featuring 15 finalists capturing life across Western Australia.
HEAD ON PHOTO AWARDS AND OPENING WEEKEND
The Festival launches at Bondi Pavilion on 6 November, when the winners of the 2026 Head On Photo Awards will be announced. Across Portrait, Landscape and Exposure, 110 finalists and three winners will share an $80,000 prize pool, with all works selected through Head On’s anonymous judging process. The Awards exhibitions will be presented across Bondi Pavilion Gallery, Bondi Beach promenade and Paddington Reservoir Gardens.
The opening weekend also brings photographers and audiences together for a program of talks, panels and professional events. Highlights include Women in Focus, a discussion on conflict photography, a session examining the business of photography in the AI era; and a conversation on collecting, buying and selling photography.
The Head On Photobook & Zine Market returns with more than 20 self-published photographers, while Faces of Bondi will grow throughout the Festival as local residents and visitors contribute portraits and selfies to an evolving community artwork at Bondi Pavilion.
Beyond the Featured Program, Head On’s Open Program extends the Festival across Australia with 51 independent exhibitions in galleries, community spaces, bookstores and cafes across New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania and the ACT.
Head On Photo Festival runs 6–29 November 2026, with exhibitions free to the public.
Full program: headon.org.au
