Looking broadly at developments in art and society in a world intensively mediated by cameras, screens, and images, Tallinn Photomonth fosters and supports cooperation between art institutions, galleries and artists. “Photomonth’s programme seeks to emphasise photographic art’s ability to move people and bring forth new layers of interpretation both on a philosophical level, as well as with regards to social issues”, declares Kulla Laas, the director of the biennial.
“Photos proliferate in various areas of life, but art provides an opportunity to view them in a contemplative manner. This also allows us to develop our visual literacy skills, which is an important coping mechanism in a world overflowing with images”, adds Kulla Laas. Established by the Estonian Union of Photography Artists (FOKU) in 2011, Tallinn Photomonth, hosted by KAI Art Center, is an international biennial of contemporary art, which this year runs until October 31st, with some exhibitions prolonged through the next three to four months.
“Photomonth’s programme seeks to emphasise photographic art’s ability to move people and bring forth new layers of interpretation both on a philosophical level, as well as with regards to social issues”
— Kulla Laas
Almost the totality of the photographers are young – an important detail demonstrating how photography can be something different from the same “old blockbuster retrospectives”. With 4 exhibitions in the main programme and 14 in the satellite one, the festival offers a varied range of styles and points of view through the lens of a camera. “Everyone can find what’s meaningful for them: a sense of recognition, an aesthetic experience or a new perspective”, assures Kulla.
Exploring fragility. The main programme
Among those four exhibitions in the main programme, Tanja Muravskaja presents her new project Gardens – a poetic exploration of the boundaries between reality and image, as she gives the organic and living a fixed form, materialised through photography. Working with water as a real (source) material serves as a strategy for slowing down and so offering a counterpoint to the automated visual flows of the digital age. The individual photographs in the series are not mere visual images but events captured at the moment of their occurrence, when light and time turn into physical matter. The project was developed starting from professional memory and developed into an independent statement on the intersection of institutional conditions, architecture and the artist’s perspective. All the photographs in the exhibition were printed by the artist herself, a process that allowed her to take full control of the paper’s nuances of texture and colour while also becoming an inherent extension of the artist’s observations and their results captured on camera.
Sirje Runge’s project, Landscape IV, is a symphony of light, colour, and perception. Best known for her paintings, Runge has worked across media, including painting, video, and decades of teaching. Central to her practice is the concept of värviruum, or colour space: a living field where light, emotion, and structure interact. For Runge, teaching and making are fundamentally intertwined. Teaching being an art form of its own, grounded in attention and experimentation. Light, too, is not only a material phenomenon, but her greatest collaborator. The exhibition presents a selection of works by Runge, ranging from the 1970s to the present day. It also features a room dedicated to Runge’s teaching, reconstructing her experimental work with coloured papers for exploring light. Runge approaches colour as vibration and pedagogy as artistic practice. Centring fragility as both a conceptual and material lens, this exhibition invites viewers to inhabit the liminal space of matter and thought, light and shadow, creation and dissolution. Runge reminds us that the force of art often lies in its ability to hold contradictions, embrace impermanence, and transmute the fleeting into something enduring.
These two exhibitions are part of the project On fragile grounds, which proposes the concept of fragility to contextualise the work of Muravskaja and Runge, positioning it at the centre of the artists’ common commitment. Both artists have focused on exploring the material and sensory dimensions of the media they are working with, using either photography or painting to navigate between thought and material, light and shadow, the visible and the almost invisible.
Crossing Borders
Not to forget, for the first time, the Estonian Union of Photography Artists collaborates with the Finnish Association of Photographic Artists within the framework of Tallinn Photomonth. The joint exhibition Koplimets Karel, taking place across Hobusepea and FOKU galleries, displays works by both Finnish and Estonian photographic artists that have been selected by a jury of professionals from both countries. The exhibition focuses on the question of what photography means in the context of contemporary art at the present moment and how artists are constantly redefining its essence through their work. The exhibition highlights currently relevant topics, as well as different ways in which contemporary photographic art is presented – from the selection of original materials to the use of experimental formats.
“Some artists dismantle the image to explore its components; others hybridise photography with sculpture or text. Across the board, there’s a restlessness, a desire to move past the image as mere representation, toward something more layered, more alive. It’s photography unbound”
— Kulla Laas
According to the curator, Hertta Kiiski, the works shown in the Photomonth exhibition reflect an interrogation of what photography is, not just technically, but also culturally, emotionally, and politically. “Some artists dismantle the image to explore its components; others hybridise photography with sculpture or text. Across the board, there’s a restlessness, a desire to move past the image as mere representation, toward something more layered, more alive. It’s photography unbound”, commented Kiiski.
Beyond the Centre. The satellite programme
Tallinn Photomonth’s diverse satellite programme spreads through different venues. Hosted at Juhan Kuus Documentary Photo Centre, Angelika Kollin’s Tender Ground project has mainly emerged from the dusty backroads of South Africa and the soft, hazy light of American suburbs – in homes where generations share grief, care, hope, and love. Her journey as a photographer is deeply personal. “All my work is autobiographical. Every person I’ve worked with has been my teacher. They have all shown me things I needed to see in myself”, she says. Many of her projects are not merely documentary series but maps of her own inner landscapes and crossroads. Through them, she has revisited her childhood wounds – especially her complex relationships with her parents – and found ways to heal them.
Moreover, Positiiv Gallery hosts Kristel Schwede’s project Tender is the Night, directly inspired by Francis Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, and exploring the area where the characters of the book lived and loved, grew up or broke. The writer’s work is like an endless layered spiral that opens up with new observations at different stages of life. These can be charismatic characters and crazy parties, carefree days on the Mediterranean beach, or sweltering in the sun. Togetherness and delicate mental health. Wandering in the darkness of the inner world, growing up and becoming independent. Money, work, pride, love, and fate. In Schwede’s vision, the infinity of the sea and the rocky coast combine in a quiet readiness for the next challenge.
The infinity of the space
Also, part of the Satellite Programme, the exhibition SPACE – A Visual Journey explores the celestial frontier where artistic expression and scientific inquiry meet, and captures the grandeur of the cosmos through the eyes of astronomers and the interpretive visions of artists alike. Through works by 14 different artists, we encounter questions like who we are in the face of eternity and when we leave our planet behind, what values we bring with us when we discover new worlds, and who has the right to dream about a future outside of Earth’s atmosphere.
Involved artists include multiartist and engineer Mikael Owunna, who explores the intersections of science, art, and African cosmologies. Irish artist Rhiannon Adam shares how she was chosen among millions of applicants and as the only woman to take part in Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa’s SpaceX trip to the moon. She describes how space has long been accessible to the extremely rich and the superhuman, while here a group of civilians – among them artists and musicians – would have got to travel around the Moon and back, with the goal of contemplating and creating, and letting new perspectives and insights grow.
Kai Art Center: Heart of Photomonth
Kai Art Center is located on a dock, in a repurposed industrial building in North Tallinn’s Noblessner Quarter, known for its fascinating history and architecture. The ensemble of limestone and concrete buildings is full of historical associations: it was a secret submarine facility from Tsarist Russian times, it is closely connected with the nephew of Alfred Nobel, and it’s now a home to contemporary culture.
The history of Noblessner dates back to 1912, when two St. Petersburg businessmen – Europe’s biggest oil industrialist, Emanuel Nobel (Alfred Nobel’s nephew), and Arthur Lessner, owner of the G. A. Lessner machinery factory – built a submarine production centre here, the most important one in tsarist Russia. The name Noblessner is derived from the founders’ last names. From 1913 to 1917, a total of 12 then state-of-the-art submarines were built here. During Soviet times, Noblessner was home to the Soviet Ministry of Defence shipyard. When Estonia gained its independence, submarine production at Noblessner came to a halt, but ships were still built and repaired here all the way up until 2018.
Today, Kai Art Center, the main hub of Photomonth, is the cultural heart of the seaside Noblessner harbour complex, a fascinating mix of regional history, period-tinged architecture, and contemporary art and culture. In a century-old former secret submarine plant, visitors will encounter captivating and thought-provoking exhibitions, art, and cinema, cafés and restaurants, a joint office for cultural organisations, and various venues for hosting events both in Kai’s interior spaces and outdoor sea view areas. The Center aims to create an experience-filled cultural quarter that brings the contemporary art experience even closer to the public. Kai brings together artists, art and culture professionals, guests, and aficionados. Its creators consider it important to promote Estonian contemporary art both at home and abroad, so they create ways to expand Estonian artists’ horizons by providing working and exhibition space as well as through international artist-in-residence programmes.
Tallinn Photomonth
September 5 – October 31, 2025
Tallinn, Estonia
