14thedition
Mirror, Mirror
17 October – 13 December 2026
Former Provincial Library of Les Chiroux, Liège
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Images as mirrors of the world, of others and of ourselves.
To mark the 200th anniversary of the invention of photography, this edition explores the power of images to confront us with ourselves and with others.
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Excerpt from the BIP2026 artist’s statement
“Since its invention two centuries ago, photography has held up a mirror to humanity, in which everything about us is reflected. It has profoundly transformed the conditions of self-representation, influenced other artistic media and revolutionised the genre of portraiture – the mirror-like genre par excellence.
Photography is a means of promoting difference and diversity, just as much as it is a vehicle for narcissism, identity, or social and police control. It plays a role in social cohesion, bringing us closer to one another and preserving memory, but it also contributes to social fragmentation and the creation of hierarchies, not least by accentuating our egos.
Amidst this profusion of representations that have surrounded us for 200 years, and faced with the reality of a violent shift in which forms of supremacy are asserting themselves everywhere, BIP2026 will test the hypothesis that we can still look at one another (even if we cannot understand or love one another), in a precarious position and within fragile balances that must constantly be re-established.
Photography possesses an immediate and infinite genius for revealing our own facets and those of others. The portrait, in particular, holds this capacity to place us face to face with otherness as if before a mirror, yet without this position ever being fixed or static; on the contrary, it embraces agitation and disorder. We shall therefore leap from one position to another, to be dazzled by our constant and necessary reinvention.
“What if everything held together when we accept that nothing fits together?”
Anne-Françoise Lesuisse, Artistic Director
This year, in keeping with the theme that positions the image as a mirror reflecting both the individual and collective action, in a constant back-and-forth between the self and the other, between identity and diversity, between heterogeneous fragments and the assembly of a whole, we bring together, one after the other and in tandem, five different aspects of this question.
We present:
“going hand in hand”: a selection of artists exploring how photography in the broadest sense (as a way of seeing rather than a technique) enables us to observe and depict individuals (and young people in particular) in the ways they form communities, societies, families or groups of varying sizes.
the 2026 edition of “.tiff”, featuring 10 young photographers based in Belgium, selected by the FOMU – FotoMuseum in Antwerp and representative of the diversity and vitality of emerging visual forms used to address pressing social issues.
“Through the Looking Glass”: Following a call for proposals on the theme of disinformation launched by the German Embassy, the French Embassy, the Goethe-Institut Brussels, the Alliance Française de Bruxelles Europe and the Institut français, four young curators unpack and explore, through their project, the complex issue of manipulated or generated images in relation to our understanding of knowledge, evidence and belief.
“archive/presents” (provisional title): an arrangement of portraits (across all media, eras and dimensions) within an installation designed and curated by Tanguy Poujol. The portraits were collected following a wide-ranging international call for submissions on our social media platforms and supplemented by works from invited artists, as well as a selection from the collections of the Musée de la Photo in Charleroi, the collections of the Province of Liège and the Province of Liège Foundation for Arts and Culture.
“animals”, an exhibition designed for young visitors and families, based on the pages of Lous Martens’ Animal Books – a rich, eclectic bestiary conceived by a grandfather to mark the birth of his grandchildren, created using images of animals cut out from magazines, newspapers, encyclopaedias and so on. A tribute to illustrative photography and its infinite variety.