The La Gacilly-Baden Photo Festival says: Willkommen in Baden! Welcome to Baden! Bienvenue à Baden! Europe's largest photo festival is open
The La Gacilly-Baden Photo Festival will take place for the eighth time from June 13 to October 12, 2025, in Baden near Vienna. With the theme of "Australia & the New World," around 1,500 photographs will be presented in 36 exhibitions in a vast, 7-kilometer-long open-air gallery in the historic center and the gardens and parks of the city of Baden.
For four months, admission is free, and the city will once again become an open-air museum where photography and garden art combine to create a total work of art.
The ceremonial opening of the La Gacilly-Baden Photo Festival 2025 took place on the evening of June 13, 2025, at the Baden City Theater. The festival's Commercial Director, Silvia Lammerhuber, welcomed the festival guests and culminated in a minute's silence in honor of the victims of the Graz bombing. Festival Director Lois Lammerhuber then presented the festival's programming: 36 exhibitions are on view under the title "Australia & The New World" until October 12, 2025. In addition, particularly moving moments were dedicated to the memory of the doyenne of Austrian photography Christine de Grancy and the Brazilian photographer of the century Sebastião Salgado, as well as to the topic of ME/CFS.
The series of opening remarks was introduced by Ian Biggs, the Australian Ambassador to Austria, followed by Matthew Werner, the Deputy Chargé d'Affaires of the US Embassy in Austria, and Matthieu Peyraud, the First Counselor of the French Embassy in Austria. After speeches by Mayor Carmen Jeitler-Cincelli and Member of the Lower Austrian State Parliament Christoph Kainz – representing Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner – the festival was officially opened by the opening committee – Florence Drouhet, Carmen Jeitler-Cincelli, Beate Jorda, Frédéric Joureau, Christoph Kainz, Lois Lammerhuber, Silvia Lammerhuber, Christian Pehofer, and Christian Schörg – as well as the exhibiting photographers, with the words "The festival is open."
"With the photo festival, Baden is once again transforming itself into a vibrant open-air gallery that touches, inspires, and provokes reflection. Our city is the right place to host this unique cultural event. The diversity of its people, their opinions, experiences, and their vision create the intellectual framework. The sophisticated ambience of our parks and our city center provides the perfect backdrop to bring people from near and far to our beautiful city." This is how Baden's mayor, Carmen Jeitler-Cincelli, summed up the energy radiated by this festival in her opening remarks.
The grand finale was the opening concert of the Beethoven Spring Festival Orchestra under the baton of Dorothy Khadem Missagh. The festival's photographs were projected to Aaron Copland's "Appalachian Spring Suite": a tribute to the festival's artists, which was met with enthusiastic applause.
The following day, the festival hosted a unique photo summit entitled "Australia & The New World." During an eight-hour tour, the group of approximately 150 photographers, journalists, international media representatives from across Europe and the USA, and sponsors visited each exhibition, and the artists spoke about their exhibitions. Matthew Abbott, Adam Ferguson, Bobby Lockyer, and Anne Zahalka traveled from Australia, George Steinmetz from the USA, Viviane Dalles and Gaël Turine from France, Hans-Jürgen Burkard, Herbert Frei, and Ulla Lohmann from Germany, and Isolde & Dieter Bornemann, Craig Dillon, Markus Eisl, Reiner Riedler, Pia Scharler, and Alfred Seiland from Austria. All of them impressed with their artist talks on site.
The stories about the creation of the winning photos in "Our World is Beautiful," the world's largest photo competition with around 665,000 submissions, were no less inspiring. Organized by CEWE and presented by Michael Pollaschak, Head of Marketing Austria, and jury members Ulla Lohmann and Lois Lammerhuber.
Myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, or ME/CFS for short, is a disease that drains sufferers of almost all their energy. Photographer Brent Stirton has made the almost invisible visible and brought the hidden suffering of the approximately 80,000 ME/CFS sufferers in Austria into the spotlight. His photographs are on display in an exhibition this year. Kornelia Span, a sufferer of this terrible disease, shared her feelings in moving words in the exhibition.
After Mélina Le Blaye and Christian Schörg presented the school project, in which schools from Lower Austria and Morbihan in Brittany participated, and visited the exhibition of professional photographers from Lower Austria, the photography caravan enjoyed a relaxation exercise on the green meadow of Doblhoff Park. Under the guidance of Kerstin Klimt, Medical Director of the Badener Hof, and Alexander Walter-Frosch, Managing Director of the house, they completed one of the 12 stations installed during the festival. Then, with renewed energy, they moved on from exhibition to exhibition until dusk...
Click here for the EXHIBITION PROGRAM and here you can find the EXHIBITION PLAN.
The 2025 festival catalog, AUSTRALIA & THE NEW WORLD, is published by Edition Lammerhuber to accompany the festival. German/English. 21 x 28 cm. 296 pages, 219 photos.Softcover.ISBN 978-3-903462-15-1.29.00 euros.edition.lammerhuber.at//australien-die-neue-welt
GoSee : festival-lagacilly-baden.photo
CREDITS
Photographer Trent Parke
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