This year’s London photography festival takes you from the colourful streets of Kolkata to the grim isolation units of Guantánamo Bay

Dress to impress … Ravi Madan, Pride and Police.Kevin You, Encounters 2026, Open Call, Unity and CommunityPhotoMonth 2026 is a month-long festival of photography exhibitions and events across artist-run spaces, independent galleries and major cultural institutions in London. The programme features a symposium, exhibition tours and an open call, Unity and Community, which is showing at the Arts Pavilion in Mile End Park. PhotoMonth 26 is at various locations in London until 30 October 2026Megan Taylor, Siham, from The School Mothers Project, Open Call, Unity and CommunityBy including exhibitions by independent photographers and galleries, the event brings together longstanding members of London’s photography community and young breakthrough artists and thinkers who are actively shaping the future of the city’s art sceneBarry Lewis, from Blackpool in the 80sBarry Lewis: ‘As a kid from London, Blackpool seemed so far away in the north that it became an exotic chimera when I saw it on TV: miles of sandy beaches with donkey rides, not one but three piers, a huge fun-fair, a mile-long promenade full of fortune-tellers, pubs, fish-and-chip shops, plus the famous Illuminations along the Promenade. It seemed the epitome of the British at play, with everyone’s guard down and pleasure ruthlessly pursued’John Hartley, Londonis লন্ডনী, Open Call, Unity and CommunityPhotoMonth has encouraged artists for this year’s open call to draw inspiration from their own experiences or observations amid drastic regression toward division and discriminationSeamus Murphy, Para (পাড়া) Kolkata, 2026Writer Amit Chaudhuri: ‘In a city that’s constantly coming apart, breaking away and remaking itself, Seamus Murphy’s camera uncovers a calm, deeply moving formalism. Vertical lines, borders, gaps between things: all these fascinate Murphy, as do the punctuations of everyday life (animals, human figures, machines, the remnants of a habitation) they contain’Seamus Murphy, Para (পাড়া) Kolkata, 2026Chaudhuri: ‘Murphy is tapping into Kolkata’s own extraordinary history of design and formalism both in the visual and popular arts: its history of paintings, saris, signboards and typefaces, which he rediscovers and recreates in the texture of its unprepossessing present’Seamus Murphy, Para (পাড়া) Kolkata, 2026Chaudhuri: ‘Murphy is also pointing to the generation of unexpected patterns and visual harmonies in a city that has in many ways lost touch with that history. It’s as if Kolkata, unaware of itself as anything but terrain and habitation, continues to create, inadvertently, new fields of line, movement and colour’Lou Melchior, Green Mesh, from The Van, the Sock and the ShadowsIn this solo exhibition, Melchior captures the incidental overlooked object and reveals a world at once intimate, elusive and faintly absurd. The work invites us to reconsider what we believe we recogniseRavi Madan, Pride and Police, Open Call Unity and CommunityOne of London’s strengths as a city renowned for its arts and culture is the cultivation and preservation of community. PhotoMonth was founded with the belief that photography is for all, and aims to uphold these values and represent diverse communities and perspectives, reflective of the divergent and diverse cultures, practices and people that make up the cityEdmund Clark, Camp 1, isolation unit, 2009, from the series Guantánamo: If the Light Goes Out, a Geography of a SiegeEdmund Clark: ‘Since 2001, the American naval base at Guantánamo Bay on Cuba has been home to hundreds of men, all Muslim, all detained in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on suspicion of varying degrees of complicity or intent to carry out acts of terror against American interests. Guantánamo: If the Light Goes Out brings together three experiences of home’Tahmineh Monzavi, Grape Garden Alley, 2011, a Geography of a SiegeWomen are shown living together within a shelter in southern Tehran; Monzavi herself could not travel to London. Violence persists as a condition governing the citizen, narrowing the freedoms of expression, employment, movement and contact. With Monzavi, the photograph attends to lives shaped by constraint without letting those lives be exhausted by the conditions imposed on themSanlé Sory, Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso 2026, Photographers’ Gallery One of West Africa’s most prolific photographers, Sanlé Sory took an estimated one million portraits over six decades, showing the profound social and political changes in Burkina Faso. Colour Years captures a lesser-known chapter of his career. His colour prints, meticulously restored from the negatives in his archive, will be on show alongside Volta Jazz record covers featuring his portraits of the influential bands that flourished after Burkina Faso’s independence. Showing at the Photographers’ Gallery until 21 FebruaryMamu Unu, Hairitage from Art of Connection, 2023, Open Call Unity and CommunityThe Open Call exhibition runs from 14-25 October 2026