On 14 August 2025 the hospitable ancient town of Yelets for the second time will gather photographers and photo amateurs from all over the world for a major event in the art of photography – International Photography Festival “LIGHT AND COLOUR”, which will continue till 17 August.
Organizers: City Administration of Yelets, Interregional Social Charity Foundation “Quality of Life”, Bunin Yelets State University with the support of Lipetsk oblast government.
The project will be carried out in two stages:
Stage one: International Photography Contest “LIGHT AND COLOUR” held online on the web-site https://svet-tsvet.ru/
The International Panel of Judges will select the Contest finalists. Their works will become the exhibits of the main Yelets Festival exhibition.
Stage two: International Photography Festival in the town of Yelets, Lipetsk oblast on 14-17 August. Similarly to previous year, the Festival participants will be offered an intense professional development program and meetings with the best masters of the art of photography, about 50 events overall held by the organizers, partners and experts.
The previous year the Contest received over 5 000 participation requests from 398 cities in Russia and abroad. The Exhibition became the main decoration of Yelets City park and stayed open for over a month. Personal and collective exhibitions were held in 5 different sites in town.
Thanks to the exhibitions and the Festival program, its participants, local citizens and authorities had the opportunity to see over 600 photographs by modern authors; another several thousand photographs were displayed during lectures and master classes; and through photographs of the Festival participants the town of Yelets in all its diversity and beauty was presented to the eyes of over million people.
The International Festival “LIGHT AND COLOUR” is aimed at displaying the best of modern photography, made by photographers from Russia and other countries over the last year. It focuses on enhancing the tourist attractiveness of Yelets – a spectacular little town in Russia. A town that has preserved its historical look, identity, unique folk crafts, rich cultural tradition and pristine natural scenery.
Yelets is not just a point on the map, it’s a portal to Russia of its own kind, it opens a window into the world of multiethnic culture. Yelets serves like a visa in to an immense, authentic and multiethnic Russia. It is there that the International Festival uniting modern photography talents from different artistic genres.
New task for this year’s project is to gather in one space representatives of other photographic festivals and photographic contests both in Russia and abroad by including into the program their representative presentations and displays of winning works.
We invite professional photographers, photo artists, amateurs, travelers and bloggers from Russia and abroad to participate in this project, the Contest and the Festival, not to miss the opportunity to present their works, informal communication, knowledge exchange, collaboration, new knowledge acquisition, creation of new projects and new artistic works.
We are confident that Light creates Photography, exposes colours and sheds brightness on talents.
