Echoes – i.e., not just one echo, but a multitude of echoes: an exciting, oscillating idea. For photographers, an ‘object’ triggers an association – they respond through framing, angle, shadow and light, colour or black and white mixes. This in turn triggers an echo in the viewer: a spontaneous ‘yes, that’s exactly how it is’, and the start of a longer reflection or resistance. Or sometimes all of the above. From May to September, this year’s RAY Triennial of Photography once again unites several renowned cultural institutions in Frankfurt and the Rhine-Main region with photography and video exhibitions on the theme of Echoes.

The aim is to raise awareness of the medium of photography throughout the region. I wish everyone an open-minded, receptive audience, one that is not noncommittal – contemplating photographs, debating, discussing, and developing their own strategies for action. Photographs show and desire: an attitude.

Karin Wolff, Managing Director Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain

The inaugural RAY 2012, titled MAKING HISTORY, focused on the reflection of public images and presented works that addressed the staging of reality through media representations. The second collaboration, RAY 2015, under the theme IMAGINE REALITY, explored how photography not only depicts our reality but also creates new realities. In the exhibitions on the theme EXTREME, RAY 2018 presented artists who reflected on global socio-economic changes as well as the role and function of photography, which focuses not on the norm but on extreme cases.

With RAY IDEOLOGY, the fifth triennial in 2021 thematically struck at the heart of a changing global society, which faced extreme challenges exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, in which democratic structures were being questioned and models of autocratic governance were gaining increasing support in both East and West. The fifth edition of RAY 2024 ECHOES explored how images contribute to our understanding of our identity, our memories, our feelings, and our ability to grasp and process current social, societal, and political challenges.