We are pleased to present the results of FOTOGRAF MAGAZINE OPEN CALL 2025, which was assessed by an international committee of photographers and curators of contemporary photography including:

Ángel Luis González Fernández (director, Photoireland), Rafał Milach (visual artist), Marie Tomanová (visual artist), Lea Vene (curator, Organ Vida) a Markéta Kinterová (director Fotograf.zone)

Open call is a competition format, but for us it is also a space for sharing, discovering and making new contacts across the art scene. We greatly appreciate everyone who entered – the quality, diversity and international variety of the projects submitted was extremely inspiring, making the selection process really difficult. It is possible that some of the projects that were not selected may lead to other future collaborations. Our sincere thanks to all those who applied.

Congratulations to the selected artists we look forward to further collaboration.

Bart Urbanski

Solar Recordings With Family, Friends and Scammers, 2020–2025

Bart Urbanski is a Glasgow-based Polish artist whose work combines his immigrant perspective with postcolonial and phenomenological theories. He primarily uses medium format photography to explore themes of immigration and migrant experiences. Urbanski has exhibited internationally, including at LensCulture in NYC and the Royal Scottish Academy, with his work featured in numerous publications.  

„The project documents the sun’s movement during phone calls using long-exposure photography. Each exposure's length matches the call’s duration, imprinting the sun as a dark streak on solarised film. These "celestial traces" transform personal conversations into cosmic events, making time both medium and message. The images become tangible artefacts, revealing the intricacies of relationships and the ebb and flow of human connection. Rooted in the immigrant experience of maintaining fragile cross-border connections, the project also includes calls with scammers, adding an ironic layer reflecting digital intrusion. The monochromatic archive captures a vast emotional range, gesturing toward the fragility of time, persistence of memory, and hyperconnectivity amidst isolation.“

ING: Bart Urbanski

Linda Zhengová

Maybe, Happiness Is… , 2022–2025

Linda Zhengová is a photographer, writer, and curator based in Paris. Her work is rooted in an exploration of human emotions, ranging from vulnerability and trauma to the search for happiness. Through photography and interdisciplinary methods, she strives to capture fleeting emotional states, the intimate connections between strangers, and personal transformation.

„It started in May 2022 when I made a radical decision to move out of my studio in The Hague without necessarily knowing the reason behind it. I just knew that I didn't feel happy. I moved to Amsterdam instead and nomadically transported myself to different places. These circumstances allowed me to open myself to novel energies and affective encounters with strangers, pure moments…
I have been transgressing geographical borders in search of happiness, yet walking the thin line between sanity and madness. In my quest for joy, I try to present a contradiction, an intangible idea to reflect upon. 
In the project Maybe, Happiness Is… I am preoccupied with the questions, what does happiness mean, what is the emblem of ultimate freedom or can we even describe it in words or perhaps through photography.“

ING: Linda Zhengová

Jury Recommendations

Markéta Kinterová

Linda Zhengová is looking for the hard part. She asks what happiness is. Through the diary-like photographs in Maybe, Happiness is... she lets us glimpse her moments of searching for her place on earth, searching for that moment, that volatile quantity that cannot be stopped, neither captured nor named, but at least a fragment of it can be photographed. The uniqueness of her work lies in the radical honesty with which she captures herself and her surroundings, and in her ability to open up existential questions through the accompanying texts.

In Calls with Family Members, Friends, and Scammers, Bart Urbanski attempts to visualize interpersonal communication through the recording of the solar orbit during phone calls. The imprint of the length and intensity of the call is imprinted on the landscape like a light trail - turning personal moments into cosmic events. The project combines the everyday with an existential dimension, showing how emotions, relationships and alienation become visible through light and time.

Marie Tomanová

Urbanski's work makes me think deeply about the the powerful connections between time, personal relationships, and the world.

(Linda's project) The idea of searching for happiness is such a universal one and personally, one that I deeply resonate with. But even more so I am interested in the idea - what IS "happiness"?  How is it defined and CAN it even be defined? Linda's project moved me deeply and her visual narrative reflects this fragility and also the beauty of "being".

IMAGE CAPTIONS

1–2 | Bart Urbanski, Solar Recordings of Phone Calls with Family Members, Friends, and Scammers, 2020–2025
3–4 | Linda Zhengová, Maybe, Happiness Is… , 2022–2025