11/06/2026
IN CONVERSATION: SPOTLIGHT AWARD WINNERS 2026
LAURA PANNACK AND LOUISE DESNOS
WED 17 JUNE | 6 - 7PM | ONLINE
FREE, BOOK NOW: https://www.belfastphotofestival.com/events-2026/in-conversation-laura-pannack-and-louise-desnos-spotlight-award-winners-2026
Join the winners of the Belfast Photo Festival’s Spotlight Award 2026 as they talk about their photographic career to date, and their winning body of work.
Artist Bios:
Laura Pannack is a London-based photographic artist. Her practice investigates the space between fact and feeling, rooted in analogue photography, primarily medium and large format, and expanded through collage, mixed media and experimental techniques. Grounded in the tradition of social documentary portraiture, her work stretches the boundaries of narrative and authorship, creating images that are as much about internal landscapes as external realities.
A strong interest in psychology and science runs through her process, shaping how she observes, connects and collaborates. She is drawn to transitional states, adolescence, emotional thresholds and unseen tensions. Often working over long periods, she allows ideas and relationships to unfold organically, creating images that hold intimacy, ambiguity and space for reflection.
Louise Desnos is a French photographer based in Paris. Since completing her studies in 2017, she has moved between personal projects and commissions, and has been represented by Agence VU’ since 2022.
While her approach can be described as naturalistic, she also creates situations and visual playgrounds that serve as fertile ground for image-making. Her work focuses on details, bodies, identities and territories in an ongoing search for signs. In 2024, she published her first book, ‘Acedia’, with Witty Books. Her work has been exhibited in France and internationally, alongside commissioned projects spanning portraiture, documentary and fashion.
Hosted by:
Darren Campion, Curator at Photo Museum Ireland.
In 2022 he co-curated two major surveys of contemporary Irish photography, The Politics of Place, and Photography & the Social Gaze. With Trish Lambe, Artistic Director, Photo Museum Ireland, he co-curated No Place Like Home: The Domestic in Irish Photography, surveying recent photographic representations of home in Ireland. He has also written extensively about contemporary photographic practices, particularly on visual narrative, and the photobook.
He has contributed to international publications and websites, including FOAM, Paper Journal, YET magazine, Photomonitor, and the Irish Arts Review, as well as essays and texts for several artists’ monographs, including Thomas Albdorf, General View (Skinnerboox, 2017) and Aapo Huhta’s Omatandangole, (Kehrer Verlag, 2019). In 2024 he curated Skin / Deep: Perspectives on the Body, a survey exhibition considering experiences of the body through photography and lens-based media.
Upcoming projects include The Forbidden Sun, a major new solo exhibition by Robert Ellis, co-curated with Trish Lambe, and Afterimage: Photography in the Digital Age, a Photo Museum Ireland national touring exhibition, with partners The Dock, Carrick-on-Shannon, and Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, supported by the Arts Council.
Tickets: Free
BOOK NOW: https://www.belfastphotofestival.com/events-2026/in-conversation-laura-pannack-and-louise-desnos-spotlight-award-winners-2026
