Foto Tallinn 2024 did more than offer a survey of current photographic trends. What emerged was a collective sense of photography as a medium in flux—anchored not in surface or image alone, but in materiality, memory, and process.

Responding to the global fetishization of post-Soviet style and the so-called “New East,” the exhibition resists reductionist clichés of grayness, grit, and exoticism. Instead, it foregrounds the nuanced, often ironic, and deeply personal visual languages developed by local photographers navigating between glamour and marginality.