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Photoville Festival

Outreach Spotlight:
Photoville Festival

Bridging Generations: Intergenerational Learning

Photoville Talks
Photoville Education
- Curriculum and lesson plans
- Studio tours
- Educator exhibition grants
Educator Professional Development
- - The Compassionate Classroom: Social Emotional Learning
  - Disability / Visibility Resources
Bridging Generations: Intergenerational Learning
My Park Moment
We, Women Educator Guide
Community Heroes

Celebrating 15 Years of Photoville

PhotoWings is honored to continue our partnership with Photoville as they celebrate their 15th anniversary festival in 2026. For over a decade, Photoville has been a vital platform for photographers, educators, and curators from around the world to share powerful visual stories that connect and inspire — a mission that deeply aligns with our own.

This year, the Photo Village returns to Brooklyn Bridge Park, with additional open-air exhibitions across NYC Parks and cultural institutions throughout the five boroughs. We can't wait to see what this milestone year will bring.

Congratulations to the Photoville team and their longtime partners — Brooklyn Bridge Park, NYC Parks, and the vibrant network of cultural spaces that make this festival possible. Here's to 15 years of visual storytelling in public spaces.

Photoville (amplifies visual storytellers and connects them to a worldwide diverse audience through its free photo festival and year-round activation of public spaces and educational community programming.

Since 2017, our education partnership has resulted in Lesson Plans and Toolkits, Resource Guides, Educator Labs, an Artist Visit Fund and Educator Exhibitions. We also partnered on the community organizing and public art project Community Heroes, a resource guide for the San Francisco photo show, My Park Moment, and the We Women traveling photo exhibition.

Our Education and Community partnership includes the Festival’s Education Day with field trips to the Festival stomping grounds in Brooklyn Bridge Park, engaging conversations with professional artists, and a series of lively youth artist panel talks known as the Youth Artist Exchange, all tailored to middle and high school students.

The partnership will also be documenting Photoville talks. It has also supported professional development days for teachers to design curriculum, educator grants, community-building family photography evenings, student photo-field trips, Educator’s Coffee Hours,Teaching Artist Microgrants, and redesign of the Photoville website and archive.

The Value of Our Photographic Heritage: Five Perspectives - Photoville Festival 2021

A discussion about the power and perception of photography, the value of saving both personal and professional work, photography’s importance to history and what can be learned through it. Photo Historian and Curator Gail Buckland, Photo Editor Mike Davis, Photography Professor Lauren Walsh, and educators and photographers Ron Haviv and Kamal Badhey with PhotoWings Founder Suzie Katz. This event was pre-recorded.

Watch Photoville Talks here

Photoville 2025 Report

The 14th annual Photoville Festival featured the iconic Photo Village in Brooklyn Bridge Park with their classic shipping containers, in addition to open air exhibits across all 5 boroughs. It also featured in-person and virtual workshops and special events, including artist talks, professional development workshops, tours and more. We displayed 87 exhibitions dispersed throughout New York City.

Over 1,000,000 visitors engaged with free and public exhibitions in the five boroughs, showcasing the incredible work of over 200 artists, collaborating with partners including The New York Times, National Geographic, The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Alice Austen House, Doctors Without Borders, Magnum Foundation, Pulitzer Center and more.

Working with parks and city officials to safely install exhibition banners and custom structures throughout parks and public spaces in New York City, exhibitions remained on view for several months so that communities could enjoy them while using these open spaces as a place to recharge, exercise, and relax.

Daytime programming at the 2025 Festival included 100+ workshops and special events presented with and by artists and industry professionals, with partners such as Diversify Photo, Leica Camera, Diversify Photo, PhotoWings, The Pulitzer Center and more. Professional development workshops had over 600 attendees.

Over 700 students and educators across New York City attended the 2025 Festival education program which was proudly supported by PhotoWings and the NYC Mayor’s Office of Media & Entertainment. Throughout the week, participants were able to meet exhibiting photographers to hear them speak about their work, while also attending panel discussions of student photographers beginning their journey in visual storytelling.

Visit Photoville.nyc to explore this year's festival!

Image credit: Jessica Bai / Photoville 2020

Above Image credit: Jessica Bai / Photoville 2020
Below Image credits: Suzie Katz

Image credits: Suzie Katz

Watch Photoville Talks

PhotoWings has supported the documentation of the Photoville Talks for the past three years, to expand the ways the global community can be a part of these important dialogues. Explore the collection of Photoville Talks today!

Reading the Pictures: Pete Souza and Michael Shaw – Photoville 2017

A Picture of America:
Privilege, Race & The Era of Trump
Sheila Pree Bright & Danny Wilcox Frazier

An Afternoon with Jamel Shabazz

RECLAIM Photography Panel
Laura Beltrán Villamizar, Shahidul Alam, Austin Merrill, Daniella Zalcman, Brent Lewis, moderated by Tara Pixley

Watch more Photoville Talks

A Picture of America: Privilege, Race & The Era of Trump

Presented in partnership with with Leica
Featuring: Sheila Pree Bright, Danny Wilcox Frazier

Explore the lives of individuals and communities that are often unseen, through the perspective of renowned photographers Sheila Pree Bright and Danny Wilcox Frazier. Bright and Frazier create visual, contemporary stories about social, political and historical contexts not often seen in the visual communication of traditional media and fine art platforms about divided communities. Their work captures and presents aspects of culture, and sometimes counter-culture, that challenge what we see and how we see it.

Reclaiming Photography

Featuring: Laura Beltrán Villamizar, Shahidul Alam, Austin Merrill, Daniella Zalcman, Tara Pixley (Moderator), Brent Lewis

A panel discussion from the founding members of RECLAIM: an alliance of The Everyday Projects, Native Agency, Majority World, Women Photograph, Minority Report [renamed from Visioning Project], and Diversify Photo. RECLAIM is made up of six organizations who are committed to amplifying the voices of underrepresented photographers and decolonizing the photojournalism industry. They are working together to diversify the community of visual storytellers, making sure that the lenses through which everyone interpret our world are as diverse as the people and places they hope to document.

Committed: A Leica Conversation with Doug Menuez and Mark Mann on the Impact and Importance of Long-Term Projects

Featuring: Doug Menuez, Mark Mann

Join Doug Menuez and Mark Mann as they dive into an in-depth discussion on how to overcome challenges and fears that arise in projects.

Climates in Conflict
Presented in partnership with The Ground Truth Project

Featuring: Laura Heaton, Nichole Sobecki and Charlie Sennott

Global warming no longer feels like a threat just for future generations. Extreme weather and rising temperatures are destabilizing communities across the globe and pushing people from their homes. This conversation featuring Photojournalist Nichole Sobecki, Journalist Laura Heaton and award winning foreign correspondent and The ground Truth Project Founder and Executive producer, Charles Sennott, will explore how the major challenges of our time — migration, extremism, conflict over dwindling natural resources — have roots in climate change. From Afghanistan to Colombia and Somalia, environmental changes have dire implications for security and are harbingers of global risks to come. What’s being done to address these concerns? What more can be done? How can visual storytelling help?

PDN’s 30: Advice for Emerging Photographers from Emerging Photographers

Presented in partnership with Photo District News
Featuring Holly Stuart Hughes (Moderator), Sasha Arutyunova, Benedict Evans, Jake Naughton, Frances F. Denny

Photographers chosen for the 2017 PDN’s 30: New and Emerging Photographers shared useful lessons they learned as they launched their careers, explain how they got their work seen and noticed, and offer advice on finding your style and building support for personal projects with PDN’s Editorial Director, Holly Hughes.