HAMBURG.- The Deichtorhallen Hamburg has opened “Alliance, Infinity, Love – in the Face of the Other,” the central exhibition of the 9th Triennial of Photography Hamburg, in the Halle für aktuelle Kunst. Curated by Mark Sealy, artistic director of the Triennial, the exhibition remains on view through September 22, 2026, bringing together around 500 works by approximately 30 artists and artistic positions working across photography, video and film.
The exhibition explores photography as a space of encounter, empathy and transformation. Rather than treating the medium as neutral, Sealy presents photography as an emotional and political field—one capable of shaping perception, questioning social divisions and challenging the separation between “us” and “the other.” The show’s title reflects the ethical ideas guiding the festival: alliance, infinity and love.
Spanning geographies from Australia, Japan, Lebanon and Palestine to Brazil, Jamaica, South Africa, Belgium, Britain and Greenland, the exhibition gathers artists whose works speak from very different cultural experiences. Their projects address identity, liberation, community, visibility and invisibility, spirituality and pain, desire and intimacy—always returning to the possibility that love and artistic creativity can produce change.
The exhibition unfolds through three guiding chapters. “Alliance” considers connection without erasing difference. Among the works in this section is the collaboration between Derik Lynch and Matthew Thorne, whose Marungka tjalatjunu (Dipped in Black) proposes Indigenous knowledge as something living and evolving rather than fixed. Also featured are Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Alex Hirst, whose 1980s partnership fused Yoruba traditions with European modernism in a radical photographic language.
“Infinity” turns toward continuity and the open possibilities of human development. The section imagines a world without restrictive borders, where marginalized or silenced voices become part of visual culture and everyday life. Artists such as Hélène Amouzou and Sandra Brewster present the Black subject as both spatially present and resistant to fixed temporal categories, while works such as Mónica de Miranda’s As If the World Had No West connect human history to the wider resonance of the natural world.
The chapter “Love” looks at affection, desire and care across difference. Artists including Mao Ishikawa, Inuuteq Storch and Tyler Mitchell use photography as a practice of community, empathy and repair. Mitchell’s images, sensual in tone and atmosphere, create spaces of tenderness and intimacy in which the Black body can exist beyond fear and toward joy.
Among the artists included are Laura Aguilar, Richard Avedon and James Baldwin, Dawoud Bey, Sandra Brewster, Mónica de Miranda, Omar Victor Diop and Lee Shulman, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Arlene Gottfried, Eikoh Hosoe, Mao Ishikawa, Teresa Margolles, Tyler Mitchell, Ebony G. Patterson, Lindokuhle Sobekwa, Stephanie Syjuco, Inuuteq Storch and Nil Yalter, among others.
The exhibition is part of the broader 9th Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2026, which has brought 11 exhibitions to eight museums and exhibition venues across the city under the shared title “Alliance, Infinity, Love – in the Face of the Other.” The Triennial’s Opening Days, held from June 4 to June 14, 2026, included institutional exhibitions, 15 projects from Hamburg’s independent photography and art scene, artist talks, performances, screenings, music and special guided tours.
Sealy, a London-based curator, writer and director of Autograph ABP, has long focused on decolonization, representation and cultural violence in photography. His publications include Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Times, Photography: Race, Rights and Representation and A Lens on Liberation: Photography as Resistance.
“Alliance, Infinity, Love – in the Face of the Other” is on view at Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Deichtorstr. 1-2, 20095 Hamburg, through September 22, 2026. The museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and until 9 p.m. on the first Thursday of each month, with free admission from 6 p.m.
