Mesnographies 2026 Photography Festival

Mesnographies 2026: photography as testimony, memory and resistance

From June 6 to September 1, 2026, the sixth edition of Mesnographies returns to Les Mesnuls with one of its most committed programs to date. The event brings together 22 artists from 15 nationalities. Moreover, the French photography festival continues to establish itself as a platform where intimate stories intersect with urgent social realities.

This year, artistic director Claire Pathé places a powerful focus at the heart of the festival: “Je te crois” (“I Believe You”), a collective exhibition dedicated to survivors of incest and child sexual abuse. Selected from seventy international submissions, seven photographers transform personal trauma into visual testimony. As a result, they contribute to the vital effort of breaking the silence surrounding one of society’s most hidden forms of violence. The 2026 edition is supported by the Enfants Kintsugi Foundation, whose mission is to protect children and combat sexual violence.

Alongside this focus, eleven projects explore a wide range of contemporary concerns, from war and family memory to climate anxiety and resilience. The exhibitions are installed throughout the municipal park and the surrounding landscape. Consequently, Mesnographies invites visitors to navigate stories that are sometimes painful, sometimes poetic, but always profoundly human.

For IRK Magazine, six projects stand out as some of the most compelling discoveries of this year’s edition.

IRK’s highlights of Mesnographies 2026

Virginia Morini: Can You Keep a Secret?

Among the most striking works in the “Je te crois” focus, Italian photographer Virginia Morini presents an ambitious long-term project that investigates incest as both a personal and collective reality. The work is rooted in her own family history. “Can You Keep a Secret?” reconstructs domestic spaces where trauma occurred. In addition, it invites survivors to physically engage with these environments through performative and cathartic gestures.

Combining photography, personal archives, drawings, recordings and written testimonies, Morini creates what she describes as a “cartography of silence and resistance.” Her images oscillate between dream and reality, mirroring the fragmented mechanisms of memory itself. Rather than reducing survivors to their suffering, the project proposes a visual language of healing and reconstruction. Importantly, it is a courageous and deeply moving body of work that transforms disclosure into an act of collective care.

Lucie Sassiat: Cartography of the Unspeakable

French photographer Lucie Sassiat turns toward her own family archives to investigate memories buried beneath years of silence. “Cartography of the Unspeakable” begins with recurring sensations and unexplained physical discomforts that persisted throughout childhood. These memories gradually lead to the recognition of abuse.

Using family photographs alongside contemporary images of objects, interiors and seemingly ordinary details, Sassiat constructs a forensic exploration of memory. The work refuses sensationalism. Instead, it focuses on the unsettling banality of violence and the traces it leaves behind. Through carefully assembled visual evidence, the artist transforms photography into a tool for testimony, resilience and recognition. The result is both intimate and deeply resonant.

Mika Sperling: I Have Done Nothing Wrong

Russian-German artist Mika Sperling delivers one of the most formally sophisticated projects of the festival. In “I Have Done Nothing Wrong”, photography, archival material, drawing and theatre intertwine to examine the long-lasting consequences of childhood sexual abuse. The work also addresses the mechanisms of family complicity.

The project emerged after Sperling became a mother and began confronting memories of abuse. Through acts of cutting, erasure and reconstruction, she revisits family photographs and inherited narratives. Particularly powerful is her decision to preserve the image of her younger self while methodically removing or obscuring the figure of the abuser. This visual strategy transforms absence into evidence. It exposes the ways families often rewrite or conceal violence. The work is as emotionally devastating as it is formally precise.

Vic Bakin: Epitome

Outside the central focus, Ukrainian photographer Vic Bakin offers one of the festival’s most haunting reflections on war and displacement. “Epitome” originates from a photograph taken in 2014 during the annexation of Crimea and the invasion of the Donbas. However, the image acquired a radically different meaning when printed after the full-scale Russian invasion of 2022.

The landscape seen from a train window becomes a silent witness to one of the largest population displacements in contemporary Europe. Chemical imperfections left on the print due to wartime shortages transform into accidental scars. These scars physically inscribe history onto the image itself. Bakin’s work demonstrates how photography can absorb the passage of time. In this way, it turns a seemingly ordinary landscape into a monument to collective memory.

Sasha Mongin: The Dying Man Who Wouldn’t Die

French-American photographer Sasha Mongin presents a deeply personal meditation on illness, survival and family mythology. “The Dying Man Who Wouldn’t Die” revisits her father’s contamination with HIV through a blood transfusion in the early 1980s. It also explores the years spent believing his death was imminent.

Rather than approaching the subject through straightforward documentary methods, Mongin filters these memories through the perspective of the child she once was. Reality and fantasy constantly overlap. Dreams, fears, denial and dark humour coexist within images that feel both fragile and theatrical. The resulting series becomes an exploration not only of illness, but of the stories families construct in order to endure uncertainty. It is a remarkable example of how personal history can be transformed into universal emotional experience.

Lisa Sorgini: The Bushfire

Presented as part of “Le Jardin n’est pas clos”, the festival’s recurring program dedicated to environmental issues, Australian photographer Lisa Sorgini addresses the emotional realities of climate change through the lens of motherhood.

“The Bushfire” draws on her experience during Australia’s devastating Black Summer bushfires and the catastrophic floods that followed. Holding her newborn child while smoke filled the air, Sorgini confronted a new form of parental anxiety: the inability to shield future generations from environmental collapse. Her photographs avoid spectacular disaster imagery in favour of something more intimate and unsettling. They focus on vulnerability, care and the psychological burden of raising children in an increasingly unstable world.

At a moment when climate change is often discussed through statistics and policy debates, Sorgini reminds us that its consequences are also profoundly emotional.

Mesnographies 2026: a festival where photography becomes a voice

More than a photography festival, Mesnographies 2026 functions as a space for listening. Whether addressing incest, war, illness or climate change, the artists gathered this year share a common desire. In other words, they aim to transform personal experiences into collective reflection.

The decision to dedicate a major focus to incest makes this edition particularly significant. By placing survivors’ voices at the centre of its program, Mesnographies demonstrates how photography can become a powerful tool for visibility, recognition and social change.

Between difficult truths and fragile moments of hope, the festival offers a portrait of our contemporary world that is both uncompromising and humane.

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Cover image: Campus Stellae © Edoardo de Ruggiero, Mesnographies 2026