Paper Photo Festival (PPF) is an international festival based at Zamek Sielecki (Sosnowiec), which focuses on photobooks as an autonomous form of artistic expression, equivalent to exhibitions, multimedia projections, etc. Photobooks give creators greater freedom for uncompromising artistic expression; they are signed, limited edition, and numbered. Visual artists are increasingly turning to this form. The collectible value of photobooks can be comparable to that of “normal” works of art.
As part of the first edition in 2025, we showcased a total of 329 publications:
- 142 publications and 36 objects as part of 4 main exhibitions + 1 accompanying exhibition
- 117 student publications from 7 universities as part of the Paper Academy
- 70 publications from 13 exhibitors in the trade show and self-publishing zone
- 10 author meet-and-greets, 3 book launches, 2 lectures, 1 film screening, and 5 one-on-one editing workshops with RUST
- Contest: 99 submissions across 2 contests, 5 jury members, 2 winning publications, 11 publications on the shortlists, 10 publications receiving honorable mentions, 66 publications featured in the post-contest exhibition.
In the second half of the 20th century, photographic publications became an important form of popularizing artistic photography. With the changes in the printing market at the beginning of the 21st century, photobooks emerged worldwide as a new form of artistic expression. This was accompanied by a significant increase in the number of publishers focusing on this area of activity – according to industry reports, there were 92 such publishers worldwide in 1999, and 485 in 2021.
Poland has also seen a sharp increase in the number of art books published. According to a report by the Polish National Library, between 2001 and 2022, there was an almost 700% increase in the number of publications classified as “fine arts, graphics, photography” (while the total number of other book titles increased by 50% during this period). As a result, in 2022, the Polish National Library introduced a new subcategory: art books, most of which are photobooks.
The 2026 festival will take place in the gallery spaces of Zamek Sielecki—the Sosnowiec Art Center.