Open call 2023 announced!
An Open Call for Fotofestiwal Open Program gives you an opportunity to present your works to the audience of the International Festival of Photography held in June 2023 in Łódź (Poland). We are looking for artists with exceptional personalities and projects which present bold visions. The call for entries is open – with no thematic or age limits. We invite specialists from the world’s most important media and photographic institutions to join the jury. From among the submitted projects the jury will select six which, in cooperation with the curators of Fotofestiwal, will be presented in the form of an exhibition.
JURY
- Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo is an artistic-research with a PhD from the École nationale supérieure de la photographie (ENSP, Arles). After one year at the National School of the Arts (NSA), Johannesburg, he graduated in Photography in Chile and completed his Masters of Fine Arts at the Villa Arson, Nice, in 2014. He has curated exhibitions including Mapuche at the Musée de l’Homme, Paris, and Monsanto: A Photographic Investigation at the Rencontres d’Arles, which has been on tour for six years under his permanent supervision, and Geometric Forests by Ritual Inhabitual at Les Rencontres d’Arles 2022. Valenzuela Escobedo is a guest tutor at international art schools and institutions, most recently at Parsons, Paris, International Summer School of Photography, Latvia, and Atelier NOUA, Bodø. He is a collaborator of 1000words, Futures Photography; member of the Prix du livre Arles jury 2022 and co-founder of doubledummy studio, a platform that creates a space for producing and showcasing critical reflections on documentary photography.
- Maja Dyrehauge Gregersen (born 1978 in DK and holds a MA from the University of Copenhagen), has been Managing Director of Copenhagen Photo Festival since 2016 with an increasing interest in experimental and outdoor exhibition concepts in her striving for a more accessible and sustainable festival format. She has a strong focus on international and long-term collaborations across Europe and has worked with many art and photography institutions, festivals and photographers as a juror member, portfolio reviewer, curator and project manager. She has been in charge of numerous photography-based projects with partners across the culture field and has worked in the culture industry for more than 17 years.
- Sophia Sadovskaya (b. in 1989 in Minsk) educator, curator based in Minsk, Belarus. Graduated from the Department of Art History at Moscow State University, worked at the gallery of contemporary Art “Ў” and at the National Art Museum of Belarus. Experienced in working with curation, education and mediation in the field of arts, as well as with interdisciplinary projects for environmental activists and artists.
- Salvatore Vitale (b. 1986, Palermo, Italy) is a Swiss-based artist, editor and educator. In his multi-layered artistic practice and research, Vitale’s work focuses on the development and complexity of modern societies exploring power structures, political cosmologies and technological mediation, whilst making use of expanded documentary analysis, including elements of fiction, speculative storytelling and the use of multiple visual forms. Vitale is a lecturer at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HSLU) where he leads the Transmedia Storytelling programme. He has led workshops worldwide and is a visiting lecturer at the Royal Academy of Arts (KABK), the Paris College of Arts (PCA), the University of South Wales and the University of the West of England, Bristol to name but a few. Vitale is also the co-founder and editor-in-chief of YET magazine, a Swiss-based international photography magazine that focuses on the evolution of the photography practice within the contemporary art field. Vitale has contributed to and edited several publications, including HYBRIDS: Forging New Realities as Counter-Narratives and RESET: Questioning The Image, The Market and The Role of Represenation (Futures Photography, 2020 and 2021) and NUMMER: Post–Photography (HSLU Lucerne, 2021). He was also curating international symposia including Documentary Futures: New Ecologies, Science and Aesthetics at the University of South Wales, Hybrids for Futures Photography Platofm and the HELGA: Communication in Space at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
- Marta Szymańska is a photography curator from Poland. She has been creating Fotofestiwal – International Festival of Photography in Lodz since 2004. She co-creates Fotofestiwal Collective, which tests collective, democratic ways of working and managing a cultural project. Marta was a vice-director of the Archeology of Photography Foundation which deals with saving, developing and promoting the archives of Polish photographers. Her curatorial experience includes exhibitions: “Tender Attention” (2021, Museum of Art in Lodz), “Long life for Belarus” (2021; Pilecki Institute in Berlin, Fotofestiwal Lodz), “Be a Lady – contemporary woman photographers in Belarus” (2020, Month of Photography in Minsk) and others. She is a reviewer of portfolio reviews and juror of photo competition.
WHAT SELECTED AUTHORS RECEIVE
- Exhibition during FOTOFESTIWAL in Łódź (over 20.000 viewers) for 6 artists,
- Artistic fee 400 euro,
- Accomodation for main opening weekend of the festival (4 nights),
- Reimbursement of travel costs up to 200 euro,
- Exhibition production budget 450 euro.
You can send your questions on: opencall@fotofestiwal.com
ABOUT FOTOFESTIWAL
Fotofestiwal was established in 2001 as one of the first photography events in Poland. Since then it has grown into one of the most relevant photographic festivals in Europe but its core mission has not changed: presenting photography in its various ways (via exhibitions, films, slideshows, workshops etc.) but also talking about important social issues and introducing the unobvious beauty and unique history of our city to the audience. For such reason we organize thematic exhibitions in various post-industrial spaces, which Łódź is well known for, we put stress on networking parties – (we are quite famous for those), but also every year we try to develop new ways of talking about photography: via events such as Photo-Match: Completely Different Portfolio Review, during which we focus on having equal status granted to the curators as well as artists, with formula of presentation that numerous festivals are applying worldwide now with a success. Since 2016 we work as a collective, with no board of directors, developing a new way of cultural institution management.
Edition 2023 will take place in Łódź in June.
TIMELINE
Call for entries open – 10th of October 2022
Submission deadline – 20th of December 2022
Winner announcement on fotofestiwal.com – 17th of January 2023
ph. Balázs Turós
