Installation shot Utopias Lahti 2023

Utopias Lahti is an artist-run visual arts festival organised in Lahti, Finland. The third edition of Utopias Lahti explores the relationships between photography, architecture, and urban space.

Architecture and photography seem increasingly bound by similar timespans. At the beginning of the 20th century, both photographic prints and buildings were made to last a cycle of 100–200 years, but digitalisation and the accelerating pace of construction have significantly compressed this time. Today, both disappear at a much faster rate. The subtitle of Utopias Lahti 2026 refers to London’s Crystal Palace, a monumental glass-and-metal pavilion destroyed by fire in 1936 and now accessible only through photographs.

What kinds of relationships do we form with images in the space of a city? How do photographs structure and shape our everyday environments? The festival exhibitions lead visitors from underground cellars filled with the hum of ventilation systems to a rooftop overlooking the cityscape.

To find out more and see the festival program of exhibitions, workshops and talks please go to the direct link.