CONTACT Photography Festival Activates Toronto With Citywide Lens-Based Art

Dedicated to exhibiting, analyzing, and celebrating photography and lens-based media, CONTACT Photography Festival activates Toronto with citywide lens-based art initiatives every May. For the 29th edition, three projects among the hundreds of exhibitions and events happening in May 2025 highlight photography’s critical role within activism.

Based on the 2024 anthology by 10×10 Photobooks, the touring reading room exhibition Flashpoint! Protest Photography in Print, 1950–Present launches in Toronto with a hands-on selection of more than 90 photobooks, zines, posters, pamphlets, independent journals, and alternative newspapers addressing protest and resistance. Through its reflection of diverse regional and cultural perspectives, Flashpoint! offers an opportunity for visitors to experience moments within others’ lives, grapple with complex societal issues, and incite conversations that challenge norms and inspire discourse.

In her ongoing series Erased Slogans and Birds of Prey, Filipina artist Kiri Dalena reworks archival images produced in the Philippines more or less a century apart. Erased Slogans documents civil resistance against government powers; Birds of Prey aims to work against the propagandistic colonial lens. Curated by Su-Ying Lee and presented on Toronto billboards, these projects, respectively begun in 2016 and 2024, remain globally relevant today.

Organized by the London-based Sustainable Photobook Publishing (SPP) network, What Makes a Photobook Sustainable? is a reading room exhibition for conversation on how photography books are made and circulated. In an age of climate crisis, the more than 20 works on display illuminate how photographers and publishers worldwide navigate sustainability solutions, ethical social practices, and decolonial initiatives.

For information on more than 100 exhibitions, public art installations, workshops, and events in the 29th edition, visit contactphoto.com.