Photography’s climate conscience: how Vevey Biennale frames global family ties

The Swiss town of Vevey, nestled between Lake Geneva and the Alps, has become an unlikely epicentre for photography’s climate conscience. This month, its 10th Biennale Images Vevey (5–27 September) is turning public spaces into a canvas for 50 installations from 21 countries, each grappling with the tension between human connection and environmental fragility. The festival’s theme—We Are Family—isn’t just a nod to nostalgia. It’s a deliberate frame for examining how communities, from Welsh farmers to Ecuadorian ornithologists, are redefining kinship in an era of ecological upheaval.

What makes Vevey’s approach distinctive is its refusal to treat climate art as a separate genre. Instead, the biennale weaves environmental storytelling into broader cultural narratives, forcing viewers to confront uncomfortable questions: Can family bonds survive displacement? How do we mourn species we’ve never met? And why does the UK, despite its own rewilding experiments, still struggle to translate these ideas into policy?

The family album as climate manifesto

At the heart of Vevey’s exhibition is Sian Davey’s six-storey portrait of the late photographer Martin Parr, a towering presence that anchors the festival’s exploration of legacy. But the most provocative works are those that use family as a lens for environmental collapse. A project by Chilean photographer Paz Errázuriz, for instance, documents the last huasos—traditional horsemen—of Patagonia, their way of life vanishing alongside the glaciers. Errázuriz’s images, displayed in a repurposed lakeside warehouse, don’t just capture a dying culture; they ask whether future generations will recognise the landscapes we take for granted.

This tension between preservation and loss is echoed in the UK’s own contributions. A series by British artist Sophy Rickett, commissioned for the biennale, juxtaposes archival images of 19th-century botanical expeditions with contemporary photographs of rewilded Scottish estates. The effect is jarring: where Victorian scientists catalogued species with clinical detachment, Rickett’s work reveals the emotional weight of ecological restoration. "It’s not about saving nature," she told The Guardian in an interview last week. "It’s about saving our relationship with it."

The biennale’s curators are explicit about their ambition. "We’re not here to preach," says Fiona Shields, the festival’s global head of photography. "But if you leave Vevey without questioning how your own family story intersects with the climate crisis, we’ve failed." That challenge is particularly resonant in the UK, where debates over rewilding and agricultural subsidies often pit rural communities against urban environmentalists. Vevey’s exhibitions suggest that photography might bridge this divide—not by offering solutions, but by making the stakes personal.

From Ecuador’s antpittas to Welsh courgettes: conservation as kinship

Halfway across the world, the Jocotoco Foundation’s work in Ecuador offers a case study in how cultural narratives can drive conservation. Thirty years ago, American ornithologist Robert Ridgely discovered the jocotoco antpitta—a bird so elusive it was thought extinct. Today, the foundation he established has turned that discovery into a model for biodiversity restoration, purchasing and protecting 23,000 hectares of cloud forest. What began as a scientific endeavour has evolved into a cultural project, with local rangers like Fredy Ramón Castillo leading tours that frame the antpitta not just as a species to save, but as a symbol of Andean identity.

Back in the UK, a similar ethos is taking root in Powys, where a charity called Grow for Birmingham is transforming uncultivated pasture into a farm supplying fresh produce to city schools. The project, profiled in The Guardian this week, is a collaboration between young Welsh farmers and urban communities, with Tilly Gomersall—one of the growers—describing it as "a way to feed people and heal the land at the same time." After a summer of record heatwaves and drought, the farm’s bumper harvest of courgettes and tomatoes feels like a small victory. But Gomersall is under no illusions about the scale of the challenge. "We’re not rewilding here," she says. "We’re re-learning how to live with the land."

These stories share a common thread: they treat conservation not as a technical problem, but as a cultural one. Whether in Ecuador’s cloud forests or Wales’s struggling farmlands, the most effective environmental projects are those that embed themselves in local narratives of belonging. Vevey’s biennale amplifies this idea, suggesting that the fight against climate change might begin with the stories we tell about home.

The UK’s climate culture gap: why art isn’t translating into action

For all its global ambition, Vevey’s biennale also exposes the UK’s contradictions. While British artists like Rickett and Errázuriz are at the forefront of climate storytelling, the country’s policy response lags behind its cultural output. A report published last month by the UK’s Climate Change Committee found that only 18% of the government’s net-zero targets are currently on track, with particular weaknesses in land-use and agricultural adaptation. The contrast with Switzerland is striking: Vevey’s festival is funded in part by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture, which treats climate art as a tool for public engagement. In the UK, by contrast, environmental narratives are often siloed—either confined to niche galleries or reduced to political footballs in Westminster.

This disconnect is most visible in the debate over rewilding. While Vevey’s exhibitions celebrate projects like Knepp Estate in Sussex, where the reintroduction of free-roaming herbivores has transformed degraded farmland into a biodiversity hotspot, the UK government’s approach remains piecemeal. A recent investigation by The Guardian revealed that only 3% of England’s land is currently managed for nature recovery, despite the Climate Change Committee’s recommendation that the figure should be 30% by 2030. The biennale’s focus on family and kinship offers a way forward—one that frames rewilding not as a threat to rural livelihoods, but as a way to reconnect communities with the land.

What Vevey’s photography tells us about the future

The most striking lesson from Vevey 2026 is that climate art isn’t just about raising awareness. It’s about redefining what we value. A project by South African photographer Zanele Muholi, for instance, uses portraiture to explore queer family structures in a country where LGBTQ+ rights are under threat. Muholi’s work, displayed in a former church overlooking Lake Geneva, forces viewers to confront an uncomfortable truth: in an era of mass displacement and ecological collapse, the idea of "family" is more fluid than ever.

This fluidity is also evident in the biennale’s engagement with Indigenous perspectives. A collaboration with the Sami people of northern Europe, for example, uses photography to document the impact of climate change on reindeer herding—a practice that has sustained Sami communities for millennia. The project, titled We Who Walk the Same Path, is a reminder that environmental narratives are often shaped by those who have the most to lose.

For UK audiences, Vevey’s biennale arrives at a critical moment. With the country’s environmental policies in flux and public trust in institutions at a low ebb, the festival offers a different kind of climate communication—one that prioritises emotion over data, and kinship over catastrophe. As Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor argue in their new book End Times Fascism, reviewed in The Guardian this week, the fight against climate breakdown is as much about cultural resistance as it is about technological solutions. Vevey’s photography suggests that the two might be inseparable.

What remains to be seen is whether the UK’s policymakers are listening. The biennale’s final weekend will feature a panel discussion on "Art, Policy, and the Climate Crisis," with representatives from the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport. If the past decade is any guide, the conversation will be polite, the commitments vague, and the real work left to the artists. But as Vevey’s exhibitions make clear, that work is more urgent than ever.