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The Singapore International Photography Festival (SIPF) is back for its 10th edition. And this time, it looks back at 25 years of how Singapore has photographed, documented and made sense of itself.
Running from October 16, 2026 to January 31, 2027, the 18-year-old festival returns under the rather existential theme ‘In My End Is My Beginning’, borrowing its words from T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets. Fitting, really, for a festival built around a medium that is constantly asking what we remember, what we forget, and whether a photograph can ever tell the whole truth. This milestone edition continues that reflection, asking how photographs preserve the past while taking on new meanings with time.
The anchoring event is ‘Shifting Images: Photography from Singapore (2000–2025)’, an extensive multi-venue survey bringing together 47 artists across seven exhibitions. Instead of marching obediently through 25 years of photographic history, the show hops between themes – from analogue images and generative AI to colonial archives, urban development, gender, memory and the increasingly blurry line between fact and fiction. Exhibitions will be planted across locations in Singapore: Mizuma Gallery, ShanghArt Gallery, Figment, Geylang East Library, Stories Joo Chiat, SingPost Geylang Post Office and Guoco Midtown.
And don’t miss ‘Singapore Index’, perhaps the festival’s most intriguing throwback show. At Shop-House by DECK, acclaimed filmmaker and artist Tan Pin Pin presents 63 photographs from a staggering archive of 2,800 black-and-white negatives – shot in 1991 and 1992, when she was 22 and freshly back in Singapore after living abroad. She documented everything from funerals and weddings to school reunions, society balls, religious gatherings and even school funfairs. You’ll be able to find candid snapshots of Singapore caught mid-motion, offering an early glimpse of the observational eye that would later shape films including ‘Singapore GaGa’.
Beyond the exhibitions, SIPF 2026 brings curators, artists and publishers from across Asia and Europe into the mix. The Asia Meet Symposium will cover portfolio reviews, a photo market and talks, while visiting speakers including creative director and curator Monica Allende, Berlin- and London-based artist and AI specialist Boris Eldagsen, and Shi Zhen of La Maison de Z will lead special masterclasses.
Organised by DECK, an independent non-profit organisation dedicated to photography, the Singapore International Photography Festival (SIPF) is a biennial platform bringing photographers, curators and creative minds from Singapore, Southeast Asia and beyond under one roof. At the festival, you'll be able to catch the works of both emerging and established Southeast Asian photographers.
Find out more on DECK’s Instagram, and SIPF’s webpage here.
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