The Hong Kong International Photo Festival was initiated in 2010 by 19 Hong Kong photographers across several generations.

The Festival focuses on a different theme in each edition, introducing noteworthy photographers, trends, and movements. Through exhibitions, lectures, seminars, workshops, fairs, and screenings, HKIPF bridges Hong Kong and international visual practitioners, and creates conversations between people and place, past and present, and oneself and the world. HKIPF discusses issues and perspectives.

In 1970, Nakahira Takuma published his first photobook For A Language to Come, which heralded a new era in photography with its fierce and astonishing images.

In appropriating the title of this seminal work for the theme of this year’s HKIPF, “A Language to Come”, we hope to provoke reflection on the photographic language of today and in turn expand the definition of the language of photography.