- October 1, 2026
- 8:35 pm
- Israel
From November 11 to 21, 2026, the 13th International Photography Festival PHOTO IS:RAEL will take place in Tel Aviv. Its program includes a separate exhibition of Ukrainian photographers currently living in Israel; among them are people who left Ukraine after the start of the full-scale Russian war. Israeli Friends of Ukraine is already covering the main expenses, but an additional 10,000 shekels are needed to implement the project.
Author: Pavel Shveiko
“Help Ukraine be heard on the international stage in Israel” — with this wording, Israeli Friends of Ukraine started fundraising for the Ukrainian exhibition at the International Photography Festival PHOTO IS:RAEL. According to the project organizers, for the first time, a group of Ukrainian photographers currently living in Israel has been invited. Some participants arrived here after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion.
The exhibition is expected to run all festival days — from November 11 to 21, 2026. The organizers of the Ukrainian project hope that during this time, the photographs will be seen by about 50,000 people: the Israeli public, foreign guests, representatives of cultural, public, and diplomatic organizations. PHOTO IS:RAEL does not promise a specific 50,000 visitors but speaks of “tens of thousands” annually, so the first figure should be seen as an estimate by Israeli Friends of Ukraine.
This project has another feature. Ukrainian works will not be part of a specialized diaspora event, where mainly people already interested in Ukraine would come, but in the general program of a major Israeli festival. For NAnovosti — News of Israel | Nikk.Agency, this is where the main plot lies: the Ukrainian theme reaches an audience that might not have planned to specifically look for an exhibition about Ukraine.
PHOTO IS:RAEL 2026: 50 exhibitions and more than 200 photographers
The 13th International Photography Festival PHOTO IS:RAEL will be held this year at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque complex, HaArba’a St, 5. PHOTO IS:RAEL announces about 50 open exhibitions and works by more than 200 photographers from Israel and other countries. In addition to exhibitions, there will be films, tours, meetings with authors, and family events. The festival space itself is open for free; only some special events and tours are separately charged.
On November 11, the opening day, the festival will operate from 20:00 to 22:00. From Sunday to Thursday, the hours are 10:00–22:00, on Friday — 10:00–16:00, on Saturday — again until 22:00. It can be reached, among other ways, via the Carlebach red line light rail station; the Tel Aviv HaShalom railway station is also relatively nearby. For the Israeli reader, this is a useful detail: it is essentially in the center of Tel Aviv, not a closed exhibition venue on the periphery.
The theme of the current festival is Citizens / אזרחים / “Citizens”. PHOTO IS:RAEL interprets it more broadly than the formal entry in the teudat-zehut: who gets the opportunity to be noticed, whose voice is present in society, and how much a person can participate in shaping the common reality. Therefore, the Ukrainian exhibition fits the theme quite naturally — the authors, some of whom have changed their country of residence due to the war, talk about their own experiences already within Israeli society.
From HaTachana to the Cinematheque: how the festival appeared
The history of PHOTO IS:RAEL began long before the current Ukrainian initiative. The first International Photography Festival was held back in 2009 at the HaTachana complex in Tel Aviv under the theme Point of View. The creation of the first festival is associated with photographers Eyal Landesman and Eldad Rafaeli; Rafaeli then was responsible for its artistic direction for several years. The current organization PHOTO IS:RAEL has existed since 2012 as חברה לתועלת הציבור, or חל״צ for short — an Israeli public benefit company operating without the aim of distributing profits.
The official retrospective shows how the venues and themes have changed. In 2010, the “Short Exposure” project took place in the Tel Aviv port, in 2012, the “Sustainability” festival was hosted in the Jaffa port, in 2014, “Photographic Memory” was held at the Carmel Winery in Rishon LeZion. Then there were “Safe Space” in Jaffa in 2016, “Identity” in Midtown in 2017, “Relations” in 2018, “Fantasy” in Azrieli Sarona in 2019, and “Transformation” at Kikar HaMedina in 2020.
In 2021, the festival had the theme “Meeting Point”, in 2022 — “Action”. The edition initially planned for November 2023 was postponed to March–April 2024 due to circumstances and took place without a general theme. In 2025, the 12th festival was called Voices — “Voices”, with Svetlana Reingold as the chief curator. Now the next step is Citizens. In this sequence, it is quite clear where the institution itself has been moving in recent years: photography here is increasingly used not only as an artistic object but also as a way to talk about community, identity, and the possibility of being heard.
Currently, Eyal Landesman is listed as the co-founder and director of PHOTO IS:RAEL, Zion Bahlul heads the board of directors, Svetlana Reingold works as the chief curator. Co-founder Yitzhak Goren is on the board of directors; Itai Bar-Yosef is responsible for development and partnerships, Netta Graf for social programs. Thus, the festival is backed by a permanent organization with year-round activities, not a temporary team assembled for a single November project.
PHOTO IS:RAEL calls itself an independent structure and writes that it does not receive permanent support from government or public bodies. However, in the open state register, there is, for example, a separate agreement of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the organization for 13,000 ₪ in 2018, related to the international component of the Identity festival. This is not the same as permanent budget funding, but an important clarification on how its work is organized: individual projects could receive support from government structures.
Here, they have long given the camera to those who are usually photographed by others
One of the central programs of the organization is called PHOTO IS:VOICE. It is based on the photovoice methodology: the participant is not turned into the object of someone else’s report but is taught to shoot their own life and determine what exactly they want to show to others. For a reader unfamiliar with the term, the meaning is quite simple — a person from the community becomes the author of the story about themselves, not just the subject of a photographer from the outside.
PHOTO IS:RAEL reports that since 2015, more than 10,000 children and adults from over 250 communities in Israel have participated in its social projects. Their works are exhibited at the same International Festival alongside professional photography. The organization directly explains this as an attempt to break the usual hierarchy between those who are shown and those who usually decide how exactly they are shown.
For the Ukrainian group, this story is directly relevant. Here, newcomers from Ukraine do not become an illustration for someone else’s story about refugees or war. The photographers act as authors and choose themselves which images to present to the Israeli audience.
Ukraine at PHOTO IS:RAEL is not appearing for the first time
A careful wording is needed here. The words of Israeli Friends of Ukraine about a “first invited group” do not mean that until 2026 there were no Ukraine or Ukrainian authors at the festival at all.
In 2018, among the 29 winners of the festival’s international Open Call were Kristina Bilyak and Sergey Melnichenko from Ukraine. At that time, PHOTO IS:RAEL received more than 900 portfolios from 52 countries, and the selected projects were shown within the festival theme Relations.
In 2022, Victoria Sorochinski represented Ukraine among the twenty finalists of the Meitar Award for Excellence in Photography — an award by PHOTO IS:RAEL and the Zvi and Ofra Meitar Family Fund. Her project was called POLTAVALAND: Ukraine’s Place of Power, and in another festival event, Sorochinski was already designated as a photographer Ukraine/Israel. This is a particularly close precedent to the current story: Ukrainian biography and Israeli presence intersected on this platform four years ago.
At the same time, the project Ukraine Runs Through It by Justyna Mielnikiewicz was shown. The photographer worked in Ukraine for many years, using the Dnieper as a line through which she told about the history, geography, and differences of the country’s regions. After the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, this long-term project acquired a completely different context — the river became, among other things, a line of war and defense. The exhibition was held in cooperation with the Polish Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
Another project from 2022 is In Their Own Words by Israeli photographer Michal Chelbin. In March, after the invasion began, she went to Poland and photographed Ukrainian refugees and Polish families who hosted them. The festival held a separate meeting with Chelbin and journalist Shani Litman about this exhibition.
Later, PHOTO IS:RAEL showed Finding Safe Space by the international Israeli humanitarian organization IsraAID. For the Israeli reader, the name is familiar, but the context here is significant: the project told about IsraAID’s work with Ukrainian women and children at the border after the invasion began, as well as programs within Ukraine — from water supply to medical and psychological assistance.
Therefore, the current “first time” is better understood narrowly and precisely: according to Israeli Friends of Ukraine, for the first time, a separate group of Ukrainian photographers currently living in Israel has been invited to PHOTO IS:RAEL. As of October 1, there is no separate card for this exhibition with a full list of authors on the festival’s website yet. The names of the participants, curator, final name of the exhibition, number of works, and configuration of the stand have not yet been publicly disclosed.
This is not the only Ukrainian cultural project in Israel
The current exhibition does not appear out of nowhere. In March, NAnovosti detailed the project “This (Not) My War” in Bat Yam, which brought together 15 Israeli artists born in Ukraine. It was backed by “Platform 202”, created to support Ukrainian authors in Israel; the curators were Vera Gailis and Svetlana Matvienko.
There was a similar process: the Ukrainian theme ceased to exist only within the Ukrainian community and entered the regular cultural space of Israel. That is why the current participation in PHOTO IS:RAEL is logical to view not as a separate action but alongside already emerging projects.
On October 16–17, another exhibition will be held in Tel Aviv, which we wrote about — “Threads of Identity” by Yana Dereza. Modern Ukrainian motankas are used there to talk about memory, relocation, and identity; the project is also held in cooperation with Israeli Friends of Ukraine.
Painting, traditional form, photography — the projects are different. What becomes common is something else: the conversation with the Israeli audience is already happening not only through political statements, rallies, or news from the front.
Who is raising 10,000 shekels
Israeli Friends of Ukraine has been operating in Israel since 2014. The co-founder and head of the organization is Anna Zharova, the co-founder and head of operational activities is Vyacheslav Feldman. IFU is engaged in humanitarian, public, and cultural projects related to Ukraine and Ukrainian-Israeli relations.
According to its published statistics, IFU has sent 157 tons of humanitarian aid, raised about 2 million shekels for the needs of Ukrainians, held 39 protest and charity events after the start of the full-scale war, and provided Ukrainian servicemen with 18,500 Israeli bandages and tourniquets. The organization’s website also includes projects of assistance within Israel after October 7, including Salute IDF and volunteer work in the south of the country.
In the case of PHOTO IS:RAEL, IFU emphasizes: the main part of the expenses is already covered by the organization, and 10,000 ₪ is the missing amount. So it is incorrect to write that the entire Ukrainian exhibition “costs ten thousand shekels”.
The exhibition production itself indeed requires significant funds. To understand the scale, one can take the official example of last year’s festival: in 2025, PHOTO IS:RAEL offered participants a separate structure measuring 3.6 by 2.4 meters with design, printing, texts, and curatorial support for 4,650 ₪. This is the rate of another project and another year, so it cannot be transferred to the Ukrainian exhibition, but it shows what the expenses for such participation generally consist of.
How to support the exhibition
The collection is conducted through Grow. The designation is “Exhibition / תערוכה”, the amount is chosen by the person independently. The organizers promise to place the names of all donors who wish to be publicly mentioned in a separate block of thanks directly on the exhibition stand.
There is just over a month left until the opening. During this time, the full program of PHOTO IS:RAEL 2026 should appear, including the names of Ukrainian participants and details of the exhibition itself. Then it will become clearer what stories they will bring to HaArba’a, 5, and how the exhibition will be structured.
The basic structure of the project is known so far: 11 days in the center of Tel Aviv, an international photographic festival, a separate group of Ukrainian authors from Israel, and the missing 10,000 shekels to complete the exhibition. In this form, the story is quite specific and without additional slogans: Ukrainian photographers are offered a professional Israeli platform, and the collection is needed to take advantage of this invitation.
