EDITION LAMMERHUBER: Record attendance at the La Gacilly-Baden Photo Festival, which came to an end on 13 October 2024, themed upon WORLD.NATURE.HERITAGE
320,461 visitors / 46 artist talks, workshops, and portfolio reviews / 97 art walks / 7.5 million euros in economic value creation / 723 reports in TV, radio, and newspapers.
A record number of visitors enjoyed photographic and garden art in the UNESCO World Heritage City of Baden near Vienna. Thus, the festival is not only the largest Franco-Austrian cultural event, but, in collaboration with exhibition partners La Gacilly in Brittany, Garten Tulln, and the Month of Photography in Bratislava, it is by far the largest open-air photo exhibition in Europe: 1,612 photographs were displayed in 38 exhibitions spread across a distance of seven kilometers.
“The record attendance at the La Gacilly-Baden Photo Festival 2024 reaffirms the substantive and artistic significance of this creative and photojournalistic initiative in its seventh year. The photo festival has made a strong impact both in Lower Austria and beyond the borders of our state,” Governor Johanna Mikl-Leitner summarizes her impressions.
“Superlatives don’t do this justice. What has been created in Baden is incomparable,” Lower Austrian writer Evelyn Schlag tells us enthusiastically.
“What a celebration again – the media weekend in Baden was simply magical. The photo exhibitions, which give the city a very special flair, are, as always, full of inspiration; they inform while providing food for thought and giving hope. Believe me, your guests appreciate what is being done here for the European photography community! But most importantly: You are paving the way for so many people to experience unforgettable encounters,” says Katharina Niu, from the Stern photo editorial team.
“Unbelievable!!! What a lineup of who’s who and best of! Wow!” says biologist and tropical ecologist Pia Parolin.
And journalist Kurt Lhotzky noted: “La Gacilly-Baden Photo is not only the largest; it is also arguably the most democratic photography event in Europe due to its presentation format. No one is prevented from seeing these extraordinary works of art because of financial or physical obstacles. So, let’s go to Baden.”
“My wife and I, along with our children, are deeply impressed by the expressiveness of the imagery at this year’s exhibition in Baden. A truly intensive and sustainable exchange of knowledge and a unique, eye-opening mirror of reality. You have given the city of Baden, us, and all future visitors a gift and a highly valuable cultural asset in that,” artists Christine Martha & Joachim Roedelius write.
Kai Rogler, Director of the Fotopark Forchheim Photography Festival, adds: “France has Arles, and Austria has Baden.”
“Humanity has opened the gates to hell,” Secretary-General António Guterres warned in an impassioned speech during the UN General Assembly in September 2023. “We are deeply concerned that all climate measures are overshadowed by the scale of the challenge.”
“These words remind us of our duty to preserve the poetry of creation for our children,” Festival Director Lois Lammerhuber comments on the magnitude of the task at hand. “With the help of photo documentaries, we have attemted to at least provide food for thought, if not solutions, on the fundamental issues of urbanisation, biodiversity, natural resources, pollution, and global warming. Which is why, in our seventh festival year, we presented the works of great masters of environmental photography: Nazli Abbaspour, Evgenia Arbugaeva, Yasuhoshi Chiba, Joana Choumali, David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes, Hans Hass, Nadia Ferroukhi, Sacha Goldberger, Richard Ladkani, Lucas Lenci, Luca Locatelli, Pascal Maitre, Beth Moon, Maxime Riché, Sebastião Salgado, Alain Schroeder, Vee Speers, Brent Stirton, Lorraine Turci, David Turnley, and Peter Turnley.”
Mayor Stefan Szirucsek expressed his delight: “The topic of World.Nature.Heritage which the festival is themed upon has inspired many and brought them to Baden. Showcased In the ambiance of the city and its parks, photographic art has been showcased, captivating visitors at the 7th edition of our international photo festival. The attendance numbers reaffirm Baden as the hotspot for photography in Austria.”
Silvia Lammerhuber, Commercial Director of the festival, was not only thrilled about the attendance but above all about the highly successful media days in August: “36 photographers and 91 journalists from Stern, NZZ, Le Figaro Magazine, and GEO, as well as ORF television, derStandard, and Ö1 Morgenjournal represented the who’s who of the European media landscape. They were joined by museum directors such as Vaclav Macek from Bratislava, Michael Jung from the Hans Hass Archive in Merzig-Weiler, and Andréa Holzherr, representing the world’s leading photo agency, Magnum in Paris.”
Klaus Lorenz, Director of Tourism in Baden, added regarding the festival’s media days: “It was fantastic as always. This magnificent festival is of inestimable value for the transformation of our city’s image.”
The bilateral photography project between schools from Morbihan in Brittany and Lower Austria was therefore also dedicated this year to the topic ‘Nature as Heritage’. The festival invited young people to express their ideas on the challenges of today and especially tomorrow: How can we shape societal models to preserve our unique world for our children?
“Photography remains undoubtedly the most powerful tool for changing public opinion and preserving glimpses of humanity,” states Christian Schörg, guild master of the Lower Austrian Photographers’ Guild. This tradition is also reflected in the exhibitions by Lower Austrian professional photographers titled ‘Nature.Awakening’ and the major exhibition of the CEWE photo competition titled ‘Our World Is Beautiful’. It was curated by Michel Comte, president of the jury for the world’s largest photo competition, featuring over 500,000 images from 170 countries.
Artist in Residence in 2023 was Ina Künne, whose images were accompanied by texts from Thomas Jorda Award winner Raphaela Edelbauer: “In all these exhibitions, there is always something that, while present in the image, must unfold in the mind of viewers. The images are like issues that each of us has to address for themselves – or rather, challenges we have to meet together through discourse. Precisely because they are not direct calls to action, they resonate longer and more diversely than a mere shock photo. Such art should be understood as a training of perception, not as a tear-jerking spectacle meant to evoke a specific ‘emotion’.”
“We have the choice to use the gift of our lives to make the world a better place,” Jane Goodall is convinced. British photographer Martin Parr certainly shares this spirit of preserving rays of hope for humanity, and the festival honored him with the inaugural Lammerhuber Award for Lifetime Achievement.
The images by Italian photographer Luigi Caputo told of the magical world of the Salzburg Festival, a world of magical transformations full of graceful beauty and fairy-tale elegance. And Tyrolean scientist and photographer Norbert Span showed us in his images why snowflakes are the ‘jewels of the sky’.
A very special visual highlight was the exhibition in Rathausgasse titled ‘The Human Footprint’, featuring images from orbit, curated by Gerald Mansberger and Markus Eisl, which proved to be a major attraction.
Embracing the guiding principle of fostering a culture of solidarity, the collaboration with festival partners Garten Tulln and the Month of Photography Bratislava continued. Garten Tulln showcased the second part of Gregor Schörg’s work on the wilderness area of Dürrenstein-Lassingtal. “The photographic interventions in Garten Tulln placed special emphasis on exciting aspects in the show gardens, and the reactions from visitors were overwhelmingly positive, with some even expressing outright enthusiasm,” says Director Franz Gruber.
In the Slovak capital Bratislava on the Danube River, the festival presented the Global Peace Photo Award exhibition from 3 to 30 July 2024. An exhibition attended by 66,473 photography enthusiasts. In November 2024, further highlights of photographic art will be showcased as part of the Month of Photography: Martin Parr, Rudolf Koppitz, Beth Moon, Cássio Vasconcellos, Gerald Mansberger, and Markus Eisl, as well as the traveling exhibition Code of the Universe – an exhibition in collaboration with CERN.
Finally, a look back to the beginning: the ceremonial opening, a very special moment of the festival. Dorothy Khadem-Missagh conducted Beethoven’s ‘Pastorale’ in the festival hall of Casino Baden. Synced with the rhythm of the Beethoven Spring Orchestra, images from the festival exhibitions were displayed on two giant screens. “It was an amazing evening; the combination of the wonderfully performed ‘Pastorale’ and the matching, poignant photos told a story of great intensity and became a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, similar to an opera yet still entirely different. I have never experienced anything like this before. A truly unique achievement. Baden can consider itself fortunate to have such inspired people, and this evening will always remain a wonderful memory for me,” says Monika Washietl.
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