Small File Photo Festival

The Small File Photo Festival is a mini festival encouraging and celebrating small size photography!

The media industry pushes for higher resolutions increasing emissions and general environmental impact. Meanwhile smaller images offer wider accessibility and circulation, as well as an exciting and diverse range of aesthetic possibilities to explore. This festival aims to encourage experimentation with more efficient digital image formats and their specific visual qualities.

Following an Open Call for Small File Photo’s from over 400 entries, the jury – Antonio Roberts, Roel Roscam Abbing, Clare Strand and Marloes de Valk – shortlisted 38 submissions for an online exhibition. Find out more.


Ágota Krnács, Anusha Alamgir, Apostolos Zerdevas, Berta Ibáñez, Christopher Graves, Dina Kelberman, David-Olivier Lartigaud, Devika Pararasasinghe, Dook, Enrico Modena, Eva Roth, Geraint Edwards, Jeanyoon Choi, Jocelyn Allen, John MacLean, Josh Spindler, Jérémie Nuel, Kaye Axon, Lauren Mason, Lian Chan, Maxim Zmeyev, Mateus Domingos, Nasrah Omar, Niamh McBratney, Nika Sandler, Philippa Bloomfield, Polocho, Rachel Hiu Yin IP, Renaat Nijs, Sabrina Tirvengadum, Sasha Silberman-Hanks, Sergio Ximenez, Sophie Sherwood, Sofia Lee, Steffi Drerup, Tanya Boyarkina, Willa Bury, William J. Brooks.

View the gallery
More information

38 submissions were shortlisted for this Small File Photo Festival Open call exhibition across 3 categories:

Small Is Beautiful
photographs using a camera that makes small-sized files (for example, old digital point and shoot, smartphone or gameboy cameras)

Dress To Compress
photographs compressed to up to 100Kb, along with the tools used to compress it.

Show Me The Pixels
photographs encouraging visual experimentation with image compression and transformation techniques and a 100Kbs maximum image limit.

The jury also proposed three special prizes:
What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?
Rip and Burn
Posthuman Postphotography.

The images are displayed on at their original size where possible. You might want to use the zoom in feature (view/zoom) to adjust the page magnification in the browser.

Credits

The Small File Photo Festival is an idea by Marloes de Valk, inspired by the Small Media File Festival and in connection to her PhD research in a collaborative programme by The Photographers’ Gallery and the Centre for the Study of the Networked Image.

Jury: Roel Roscam Abbing, Antonio Roberts, Clare Strand & Marloes de Valk

Website idea: Sam Mercer

Website development: Tom Sansome and Mateus Domingos.

Logo design: Arieh Frosh