Female in Focus
On the Cusp

International
Centre for
the Image

Female in Focus 2026 © Angela Cappetta, Unbraiding

Female in Focus
On the Cusp

In partnership with the British Journal of Photography and Nikon, PhotoIreland presents the Female in Focus exhibition at the International Centre for the Image.

The exhibition brings together the two series winners, Laetitia Vançon’s The Other Battlefields and Giya Makondo-Wills’ New Scramble, alongside 21 single-image winners responding to this year’s theme, On the Cusp. Together, the works explore lives and landscapes at moments of change.

Selected from thousands of outstanding submissions by an international jury, this year’s winners have brought the theme to life through poignant and thought-provoking imagery. The work has previously been exhibited at 1014 Gallery, London, and now comes to Dublin to the International Centre for the Image.

Single Image Winners: Ada Marino, Ana Flores, Andrea Marti, Angela Cappetta, Anna Zeigler, Cybele Malinowski, Esther N’sapu, Fran Rowse, Jip Schalkx (image above), Karen Paz Gonzalez, Kinga Wrona, Kseniya Halubovich, Laila Seiber, Lina Maria Sanchez, Nayra Aly, Oda Fjellang, Olivia Morgan, Paloma Gonzalez, Rayna Carruthers, and Teva Cosic.

Series Winner: Giya Makondo-Wills, New Scramble

Giya Makondo-Wills’ New Scramble examines a different kind of turning point: the rapid expansion of data centres across South Africa and what the artist describes as a modern “scramble” for Africa. Predominantly set in Johannesburg, with work extending into the Limpopo and Cape provinces, the project considers how patterns of extraction historically tied to land and minerals may now be replicated through data infrastructure.

Layering evocative imagery with personal letters to her grandmother, Makondo-Wills delves into the concepts of ownership, memory and communication in the digital age.

Data centres are vast facilities housing servers that power cloud services, streaming and AI, and they demand immense energy and water resources, raising questions about sustainability and equity.

Through portraits, landscapes and metaphorical imagery, New Scramble reflects on how stories travel, from oral traditions to fibre-optic cables beneath the sea, and what it means to control the channels through which culture and identity are transmitted.

“How we communicate is changing — if we don’t own the channels we use to communicate, we don’t own the stories, language, identity, culture,” says the artist. “What are the implications of this in 100 or 200 years? Could it erase our history, culture?”

Series Winner: Laetitia Vançon, The Other Battlefields

Laetitia Vançon’s The Other Battlefields is a poignant and quietly profound portrait of Ukrainian youth living through war.

The project began in June 2022, six months after Russia’s full-scale invasion, when Vançon photographed graduates in Odesa dancing among sandbags erected for protection.

The image became a catalyst for a wider exploration of young people “standing between two worlds — the life they imagined, and the life the war has imposed on them.”

Rather than focusing on frontlines, Vançon turns her lens towards daily persistence: maritime students continuing their studies, volunteers crafting bulletproof vests, and young people navigating friendship, education and love under the weight of the conflict.

In this threshold between childhood and adulthood, between past and future, Vançon reveals the enduring imprint of war on a generation coming of age in challenging circumstances.

[Featured Image: Female in Focus 2026 © Angela Cappetta, Unbraiding]
For any inquiries about PhotoIreland and the International Centre for the Image, please write to office@image.museum