What does conflict do to an artist when they are not an eyewitness, but become a bearer of its emotional resonance? How does violence — whether geopolitical, social, environmental or deeply personal — echo in the minds of those who survive, flee, inherit, imagine or simply sense it from afar?
In “Echoes of Silence”, we explored how war, tension and collective or intimate trauma reverberate in the work of photographers who choose not to use the lens as a recording device, but as a mirror of their inner landscape. At a time when images of crisis circulate endlessly through media and screens, Rotterdam Photo 2026 called for another approach: introspective, subjective and visually layered perspectives on conflict in all its forms.
