5 exhibitions reflect what Xposure really represents

In an age when images are produced, shared, and forgotten in seconds, Xposure International Photography Festival is asking a slower, more difficult question. Where does photography truly begin?

As the festival marks its 10th edition under the theme “A Decade of Visual Storytelling”, Xposure 2026 places lived experience at the centre of its programme. From January 29 to February 4, in Aljada, Sharjah, the festival brings together exhibitions, talks, and workshops that frame photography not as instant reaction, but as long-term witness.

At the heart of this anniversary edition are five exhibitions that reflect what Xposure has come to represent over the past decade.

A platform for photographers who return, listen, and build trust, often long after headlines fade.

Life behind closed doors in Afghanistan

For Iranian-Canadian photojournalist Kiana Hayeri, photography began as a way to understand displacement. Growing up in Tehran before moving to Toronto as a teenager, she learned to observe carefully when words were not enough.

From Kiana Hayeri’s gallery "No Woman's Land”, her work "At a private institute in Kabul, 700 girls study the US curriculum in English under strict security and enforced silence.”

That instinct shaped the eight years she spent in Afghanistan. At Xposure 2026, her exhibition No Woman’s Land presents an intimate portrait of Afghan women living under Taliban rule. Today, Afghanistan remains the only country where girls are banned from secondary education, while women face sweeping restrictions on movement, work, and public life.

Hayeri’s photographs focus on what persists behind closed doors, underground classrooms, family bonds, private celebrations, and moments of quiet joy that resist erasure. Rather than reducing women to symbols of suffering, her work insists on complexity. Tenderness sits beside defiance. Survival is shown not as spectacle, but as daily reality.

The Mediterranean beneath the surface

Award-winning underwater photographer Greg Lecoeur has spent years documenting the sea he grew up beside. Raised in Nice, France, his work is shaped by long familiarity with the Mediterranean, a body of water that covers less than 1% of the world’s ocean surface yet holds more than 10% of its known marine biodiversity.

From Greg Lecoeur’s gallery "Mediterranean, An Ocean of Life”, his work "Loggerhead sea turtle, the most common marine turtle in the Mediterranean. It travels thousands of kilometres between nesting and feeding grounds.”

His exhibition Mediterranean, An Ocean of Life, shown at Xposure 2026, brings viewers face-to-face with fin whales, dolphins, turtles, seagrass meadows, and coral systems.

It also reveals the pressures threatening this fragile ecosystem, from plastic pollution and overfishing to ship strikes and climate change.

Lecoeur’s approach avoids alarmism. Instead, his images invite closeness, asking viewers to recognise the sea as a shared inheritance, and responsibility as the natural consequence of attention.

Antarctica’s silence, captured

Few places on Earth are as visually overwhelming and emotionally restrained as Antarctica. Australian photographer Joshua Holko has spent years returning to the polar regions, working in conditions that reward patience over speed.

From Joshua Holko’s gallery "Antarctica, White Silence”, his work "Fortress, Under stormy Antarctic skies, a monolithic iceberg looms like a fortress of ice – its towering walls carved by wind and time.”

At Xposure 2026, Antarctica: White Silence explores one of the planet’s last great wildernesses. Towering icebergs drift through vast seascapes. Light shifts slowly across frozen horizons. At the centre of the exhibition are emperor penguins, enduring extreme cold through cooperation, resilience, and instinct.

Holko’s images are both tribute and warning. The ice appears timeless, yet it is increasingly vulnerable. His photographs linger long enough to remind viewers that silence, too, carries consequence.

Everyday strength, quietly seen

Saudi photographer Mohammed Muhtasib turns his lens toward the ordinary. Based in Jeddah, his work focuses on people, tradition, and daily life across cultures.

At Xposure 2026, Women, Stories in Pictures presents women not as archetypes, but as individuals. Farming, cooking, caring, teaching, and resting. Strength emerges through repetition and responsibility rather than heroism.

Muhtasib’s images ask viewers to slow down and notice what is often overlooked, not because it is rare, but because it is constant.

Mothers, care, and the weight of systems

London-based documentary photographer Carol Allen-Storey has spent more than a decade working alongside families in the United Kingdom raising children with severe disabilities, many of them single mothers navigating complex and unforgiving systems.

From Mohammed Abdu Muhtasib’s gallery "Women, Stories in Pictures”, his work "Mothers of Mu Cang Chai in Vietnam, bathed in golden light, a mother lifts her child with joy as another sits close, watchful and calm. Dressed in vibrant traditional patterns, she radiates strength. In this quiet hillside moment, motherhood meets the timeless beauty of the land.”

Her exhibition Defying the Myth: A photographic journal of love, resilience, and survival at Xposure 2026 documents lives shaped by bureaucracy, exhaustion, and isolation. It also reveals something more enduring. Love as daily labour. Care as resilience. Dignity as an ongoing fight.

Allen-Storey’s work does not seek sympathy. It asks for recognition, and for a reconsideration of how society defines value, dependency, and strength.

From Kiana Hayeri’s gallery "No Woman's Land”, her work "Muska, 14, returned from Pakistan where she went to school. In Afghanistan, she’s barred from studying.”

From Carol Allen-Storey’s gallery "Defying the Myth”, her work "Kallan, at a local pet shop in Bury St Edmonds, he is captivated by tropical fish and obsessed with nature, especially sea life and dinosaurs. Diagnosed on the autism spectrum at 18 months after becoming non-verbal, he now communicates well and is highly social – thanks to his mother Nicola’s devoted guidance and support.”

From Carol Allen-Storey’s gallery "Defying the Myth”, her work "Maria in hospital, as the anaesthetic mask is placed on Maria’s face, her mother kisses her with love and reassurance. Maria, who has Down syndrome, is on the autism spectrum and has worn a colostomy bag since infancy, had been suffering from unexplained abdominal pain doctors struggled to diagnose.”

A decade defined by presence

Together, these exhibitions reflect the core of Xposure’s tenth edition. A belief that photography matters most when it is grounded in time, trust, and lived experience.

In Sharjah, this January, Xposure is not offering fast images or easy narratives. It is offering something unique. Space to look longer, listen more closely, and understand what remains when the noise falls away.

Register now – https://xposure.net/