Open call for the Open Program
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 2025 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. From the submitted projects, we nominate at least one artist each year for the FUTURES program. FUTURES is a Europe-based photography platform bringing together the global photography community to support and nurture the professional development of emerging artists across the world.
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,
- Reimbursement of travel costs up to 300 euro,
- Exhibition production budget 500 euro.
TIMELINE
Call for entries open – 3rd of October 2024
Submission deadline – 24th of November 2024
Winner announcement on fotofestiwal.com – 23rd of December 2024
Open Program exhibition – June 2025
HOW TO SUBMIT
OPEN CALL WEBSITE
SUBMISSION FORM ON PICTER
JURY 2025:
- 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.
- Femke Rotteveel is since 2017 the director of FOTODOK. FOTODOK is an institution in Utrecht (NL) where photography exhibitions are curated around social themes to broaden perspectives or provide new insights. In addition, FOTODOK is organizing in depth programs, i.e. on photobooks, and is guiding makers in their development FOTODOK is actively involved in (inter)national talent programs such as Lighthouse, FUTURES, Talent Embassy and Blurring the Lines. With the major role of images nowadays in information provision, it is FOTODOK’s mission to include the educational program Learning to See in the fixed curriculum of education for all children. Femke is a connector with a large (inter)national network of cultural institutions, photographers, social organizations, funds, (impact) investors and entrepreneurs. She studied social-economic history at the University of Amsterdam and Exeter University. At the start of her career Femke worked for 8 years as head of World Press Photo’s exhibition department where she was responsible for organizing and financing the 100 exhibitions that take place worldwide every year. She subsequently was 8 years the Head of Allocations at the Charity Lotteries, where she was responsible for the distribution of the proceeds of the Postcode Lottery and Friends Lottery to cultural institutions, charitable organizations and social enterprises. She distributed more than 2.5 billion euros in this role. Femke is involved as a mentor in various startup programs and is actively involved in organizations such as KLABU, National Violin Competition and the Max Foundation.
- Clare Grafik is Head of Exhibitions at The Photographers’ Gallery in London. She has worked in public institutions including the ICA, Whitechapel, Hayward and National Portrait Gallery and with private collections. At TPG she worked with artists including Taryn Simon, Zineb Sedira, and Keith Arnatt and Evelyn Hofer. Group shows include a series of three exhibitions exploring the relationship between photography and sculpture, collage and drawing. Other projects include a solo exhibition with Bettina Von Zwehl at the Freud Museum, London, and a group show ‘Pictures from the Garden’ in collaboration with Photo Oxford 2023. Contributions to books and catalogues include Alex Prager’s ‘Silver Lake Drive’ and more recently for ‘Another Country’ (T&H). She has been a Sessional Lecturer at Birkbeck College, London, and has lectured for institutions including University of the Arts, London, University of South Wales, and Sotheby’s Institute of Art.
- Giuseppe Oliverio is the Founding Director of PhMuseum and the Artistic Director of PhMuseum Days International Photography Festival. Since 2012, he has led the organization to develop their renewed Grants and Education Programs. He has further conducted workshops in Argentina, Brazil, Italy, and in the Middle East. He has been a juror of awards such as Lucie Photo Book Prize, Magenta Foundation’s Flash Forward, Blow Up Press Book Award, LensCulture Critics’ Choice, United Photo Industry The Fence, and Cortona Happiness OnTheMove. He has worked as a portfolio reviewer for Futures Photography, Unseen, Photo Vogue Festival, Fotografia Europea, Fotofestiwal’s Photo-Match, Visa Pour L’Image. He has written for TIME magazine and L’Uomo Vogue.
- Krzysztof Candrowicz – curator, artistic director, researcher. Co-founder and member of the Foundation of Visual Education and Lodz Fotofestiwal in Poland. In 2013 Krzysztof became artistic director of the Triennial of Photography in Hamburg in Germany and since 2018 works as a curator for CICLO Biennial in Porto, Portugal. Krzysztof works internationally as a guest curator and visiting lecturer in numerous organizations, museums, schools, festivals and as a jury member of various projects and art prizes, including the Rencontres d’Arles Discovery Award, Deutsche Börse Photography Prize, Hasselblad Award, Robert Capa Award and many others.
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.
