Ilkley’s grassroots photography festival returns from 3 to 19 July 2026 with exhibitions, workshops, a photo art vending machine and a town-wide programme exploring the relationship between people, place and the natural world.
Returning for its second edition, photoILKLEY will invite residents and visitors to encounter photographic work in everyday places rather than only in traditional gallery settings.
Funded by Ilkley Town Council and founded and led by Andreea Chițan, photoILKLEY has quickly established itself as a festival interested not simply in beautiful images, but in photography as a way of asking questions: about who we are, how we live, what shapes us, and how we relate to the places and natural worlds around us.
This year’s theme, HUMAN:NATURE, looks closely at the relationship between humans and nature. It can be read as a conversation between people and the natural world, but also as a reflection on human nature itself: care, memory, conflict, belonging, resilience, change and repair. Across the programme, artists explore rivers, moorland, gardens, bodies, family histories, migration, community and the fragile ways in which people and places shape one another.
[Photo by Sujata Setia]
Andreea said:
“For me, HUMAN:NATURE is about the meeting point between inner life and the world around us, it opens up questions about identity, care, change, ritual, memory and belonging.
“One of the things I care about most is creating a festival where photographic work can meet people where they already are — in a café, a shop, a railway station, a historic building, on the street, or in a gallery. That changes the encounter. It makes the work feel part of the life of the town.”
Exhibitions and events will take place across a wider trail of venues including Ilkley Manor House, Friends of Ham, Alpkit, Tinker Gallery, Clarke Foley Community Hub, Ilkley Arts Studio, Art Shop Ilkley, Ilkley Arts Studio and a disused phone booth at Ilkley railway station.
Looking in further details at some of the projects, several respond directly to Ilkley’s landscape. A Moorland for All, by John Fontana, Eugenio Farri, Neil Bland and Mark Waddington, produced in association with Ilkley Camera Club, reflects on the deep connection between people and the moorland landscape.
[Photo by Benjamin Statham]
In One Year on Ilkley Moor, Adam Kingston also turns his attention to the moor, following peatland restoration and the slow transformation of a changing landscape. Using fixed-point photography posts installed across the moor, the work considers how photography can help us notice gradual change, and how human care, management and responsibility are part of the natural story of a place.
The relationship between body, place and landscape continues in The Good River by Benjamin Statham, a quiet and deeply personal journey along the River Wharfe. The work becomes a meditation on place, identity and the shifting relationship between the land and the self.
At Art Shop Ilkley, Coexistence, Conflict and Care by Aileen Brindle explores humanity’s dependence on, and relationship with, the natural world. Through studies of landscape, water and woodland, the project considers coexistence, environmental responsibility and the complex balance between use, care, conservation and control.
Other exhibitions open the theme outwards into migration, memory, birth, identity, care and creativity. This Land of Mine, by Andreea Chițan, uses family photographs printed onto leaves, bark and slices of bread, returning them to the landscape in a reflection on migration, memory and the fragile work of remaking home. Home Is Where You Are, by Oluwakemi Oluwunmi, reflects on human journeys, belonging and the emotional landscapes we carry within us. Where Life Begins, by Tracy McIlhatton, explores pregnancy and birth as both deeply human and profoundly natural.
[Photo by Louise Rayner]
The programme also includes A Thousand Cuts by Sujata Setia, White Passing by Zoe Boswell, Portraits of Our Time by Louise Rayner, Calculated Glitter by Sarah-Lee Evans, Boys Don’t Cry by Xanthe Hutchinson, Portraits of Creativity by Charlie Swinbourne.
A key part of the festival is its commitment to participation. The Young Photographer Competition, open to everyone aged 19 and under, returns this year, with shortlisted and winning images exhibited at Ilkley Manor House. Alongside the exhibitions, photoILKLEY will also include workshops and hands-on creative sessions, encouraging people not only to look at photography, but to make, alter, share and think through images themselves.
For 2026, photoILKLEY is also partnering with local arts organisation Village Pavilion to bring a Photo Art Vending Machine to Ilkley Manor House. Throughout the festival, visitors will be able to buy an original, pocket-sized piece of photographic art for just 50p. The project is designed to make art accessible, playful and affordable, while raising funds directly for Ilkley Manor House.
In a town often described in postcard terms, photoILKLEY is interested in something less polished and more alive: the emotional undercurrents of place, the tensions inside beauty, and the stories that sit just beneath the surface. HUMAN:NATURE gives the festival space to explore those layers without reducing them to a single message.
[Photo by Oluwakemi_Oluwunmi]
What emerges is a rich proposition: that photography can still help us look harder, feel more carefully, and notice what was there all along.
The opening event on Friday 3 July at 5pm is across three venues, Ilkley Manor House, The Art Shop and Tinker Gallery. Further details can be found on the website www.photoilkley.com and on @photoilkley socials.
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