WikiPortraits covers the 2026 Winter Olympics!
From the 2026 Winter Olympics to Sundance red carpets, WikiPortraits volunteers have been busy! We photographed scientists, filmmakers, and Olympians for Wikimedia Commons. Plus: a new EXIF editing tool and a chat with Wikimedia Ghana's Justice Okai-Allotey.
Welcome to the WikiPortraits newsletter's look back on February 2026.
This month's newsletter includes:
- Some amazing shots from the 2026 Winter Olympics
- Red carpet updates from the Sundance Film Festival in late January
- An update from FIFF 2026 in Benin
- A short interview with WikiPortraits photographer Justice Okai-Allotey
Plus, a Swedish singer and musician asks her fans to upload a better profile picture to her Wikipedia article.
WikiPortraits covers the 2026 Winter Olympics!
WikiPortraits was represented at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy by Asatur Yesayants, a skilled photographer whose work is frequently picked up by major news outlets around the world. Asatur captured striking images of U.S. Gold medalist Alysa Liu and other skaters at the Olympics.
Another highlight of Asatur's Olympic coverage was snapping a variety of photos of camera operator Jordan Cowan in action. Cowan, a former figure-skater, has achieved recognition for his skills as an on-ice camera operator.
WikiPortraits covers a full season of skating leading up to the Winter Olympics
In the lead-up to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy, WikiPortraits' first stop was the 2026 Figure Skating Championships in Saint Louis, Missouri in early January. Some participants – including Alysa Liu, who would go on to win Gold for the United States – would compete in the Winter Olympics the following month.
Following the 2026 Figure Skating Championships in early January, WikiPortraits photographers traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin to attend the US Olympic Team Trials, which would determine who would represent the United States at the Olympics in February.
The 2026 Olympics marked the highlight of a successful WikiPortraits winter covering various skating events across the U.S. and around the world.
WikiPortraits at the Big Lick Comic Con in Roanoke, VA
FIFF Cotonou2026 (Festival International des Films de Femmes de Cotonou)
The Festival International des Films de Femmes de Cotonou (FIFF Cotonou) is an international women’s film festival held in Cotonou, Benin. Its fourth edition took place February 3–7, 2026, organized by the Association Écran Bénin.
Under the theme “Femmes, libérez votre créativité” (“Women, unleash your creativity”), the festival shifted focus from narratives of violence to celebrating women’s artistic talent across cinema. Eighteen short films from 16 countries were selected from 216 submissions.
The Amazone d’Or went to American-Nigerian filmmaker Abbesi Akhamie. Actress Aïssa Maïga served as patron, and the KinoWendia program trained young Beninese girls in filmmaking, premiering their film Douwé.
WikiPortraits covers the red carpet at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival
In late January, close to 20 WikiPortraits volunteer photographers gathered from all over North America to cover the final Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah (next year the festival moves to Boulder, Colorado). It was a demanding assignment, with almost 130 photocalls in a very compressed period of time – WikiPortraits managed to cover about a hundred, a real success!
We had a lot of new photographers at their first WikiPortraits event. LaShawnda Jones, Sarah Joyce, Cloud, and Casey Newell had WikiPortraits Sundance credentials for the first time. Sarah also led the charge on the WikiPortraits Studio in Chicago. Gabe Brooks was there as a representative of AfroCROWD.
Experienced WikiPortraits hand Colleen Sturtevant managed to get us into a few red carpets we otherwise might have missed, thanks to her relationships with publicists from New York City. Jack Gould, Claire Fridkin, and Jane Yu were recruited to help out with photography.
We were happy to see Frank Sun, Adam Chitayat, John Sears, Kolby Webster, and Jay Dixit back. College students Kacy Bao and Max Surprenant were there at the tail end, having previously worked at Cannes and TIFF for WikiPortraits. Jennifer 8. Lee, Kevin Payravi, and Sara Komatsu handled administration and assignments when they weren't taking photos.
Introducing QuickEXIF
QuickEXIF is a new tool that allows WikiPortraits photographers and Wikimedia Commons editors to edit select EXIF metadata fields on JPG files, all in-browser and without ever leaving the page where the file is hosted.
"If someone wanted to edit the EXIF data of a photo on Commons, they’d have to download the file to their computer, use a third-party utility to edit the EXIF, and then re-upload," says Kevin Payravi, who created the tool. "This script makes it so Commons users can easily edit the EXIF data all in-browser. Common use cases can be to fix/add authorship info or dates. Also used to hide GPS data that may have been unintentionally included."
Note: This script is brand new and EXIF is a bit tricky, so use with caution and beware of bugs. Please report any issues on the talk page.
Capturing portraits of scientists at 2026 AAAS
WikiPortraits traveled to the 2026 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), held February 12–14, 2026, at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. The theme was “Science @ Scale,” focused on scaling scientific solutions for the public good, celebrating discovery, and promoting evidence-based policy. The meeting drew more than 4,000 researchers, students, science journalists, and government representatives from over 65 countries.
We recruited two new WikiPortraits photographers, Hongyi Zhou and Lauren Luo, to travel to 2026 AAAS for their first credentialed event. John Sears returned for a second year, and Kevin Payravi also covered a number of talks.
Attending the 40th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-26)
“WikiPortraits was also active in Singapore, with Randy Xu shooting the 40th Annual AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-26) in late January. Organized by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the gathering brings together researchers, practitioners, students, and engineers to share cutting-edge AI research.”
Portraits we captured included those of Edward Feigenbaum, an American computer scientist widely known as the "father of expert systems" and one of the most influential pioneers in artificial intelligence, and Edith Elkind, an Estonian computer scientist widely recognized as a leading authority in algorithmic game theory and computational social choice.
A short interview with Ghanaian WikiPortraits photographer Justice Okai-Allotey
Justice Okai-Allotey is a freelance digital marketer and visual storyteller, and is also well-known as User:Owula kpakpo across the Wikimedia platform. He is currently the Board Chair of the Wikimedia Ghana User Group and also a working group member of Let’s Connect, which helps Wikimedians to share knowledge, connect, and develop skills.
Justice says:
I continue to volunteer and contribute my time to Wikipedia because of the “danger of a single story”, a Ted Talk by Chimamanda Adichie, who spoke about the dangers of a single story using the African context, and it's stuck with me forever.
"Zara Larsson is at war with Wikipedia"
Entertainment website Vulture reports that Swedish singer and musician Zara Larsson, unhappy with her Wikipedia profile picture, has instructed her fans via TikTok to update her profile with a better one, setting off a mini-edit war with volunteer editors. Which photo do you prefer?
Larsson's complaint is typical: Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects prioritize and require using freely-licensed images. As most published photos of notable people are press images with full copyright and non-permissive licenses, this results in a significant number of biographies with poor quality or no photos.
That's where WikiPortraits comes in – we're a project to get more quality Creative Commons-licensed portrait photos taken for Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.
SEND US YOUR IDEAS: This article, How to Change Your Artist Photo on Wikipedia, made us realize WikiPortraits should have a process where we can have notable people raise their hands to pair with WikiPortraits photographers. Ideas welcome! Just respond to this newsletter with thoughts.
Get involved with WikiPortraits!
WikiPortraits welcomes new volunteers. If there's an event in your region you think should be covered by WikiPortraits, let us know, and we'll help get you started.
Upcoming events WikiPortraits needs help covering include:
- RightsCon (Zambia, May)
- Edinburgh Fringe (UK, August)
Donate to WikiPortraits
WikiPortraits exists because of people like you! Donate to help expand our work adding more quality Creative Commons-licensed portrait photos to Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons!
