We are pleased to present the results of FOTOGRAF MAGAZINE OPEN CALL 2026, which was assessed by an international committee of photographers and curators of contemporary photography including:

Felix Hoffmann (curator, director of FOTO ARSENAL WIEN), Markéta Kinterová (director of Fotograf.zone), Michaela Nagyidaiová (visual artist), Marta Szymańska (curator) and Peter Watkins (visual artist and teacher, FAMU).

Although an open call takes the form of a competition, for us it is also a space for sharing, discovery and new connections 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.

Joel Jimenez

Glimmers, Feathers and Staring Skies, 2025 - 2026

Joel Jimenez is an artist and filmmaker based in Madrid, Spain. Working across photography, installation, and moving image, his practice explores memory, power, and the ways history is inscribed in space through research-driven projects that move between archival inquiry, environmental observation, and speculation.

“Glimmers, Feathers and Staring Skies” begins with a hummingbird that kept returning to my parents' garden after my father's death from a neurodegenerative disease. In Costa Rican folk belief, influenced by the cosmology of the Boruca people, hummingbirds carry the souls of the dead and return to greet those they loved. Having migrated from Costa Rica to Europe, I approach the hummingbird as a body moving between science and myth, memory and migration. Through personal archives and colonial and ornithological materials, the project explores grief, interspecies care, and photography's desire to capture and classify what is ultimately fleeting.

Klára Kusá

ESCAPING, 2025-2026

Klára Kusá is an artist whose practice is informed by postwar art, philosophy, research methodologies, and medical discourse. Through performative gestures, she intervenes in both public and institutional spaces, activating them as sites of critique and dialogue.

The project ESCAPING explores the mechanisms of control and surveillance implemented in the GDR, placing them in dialogue with the current state of the Stasi Museum and materials from the Stasi archives that document historical events, sites, and bureaucratic traces. Through the juxtaposition of archival documents and contemporary images of memorial sites and institutional spaces, the project examines how histories of control are preserved, commemorated, and mediated today. It asks how memorials, archives, and museums shape public understandings of authoritarian regimes, while also reflecting on the enduring presence of surveillance and its impact on contemporary societies. 

Courtesy of the Stasi Museum Berlin and the Stasi Mediathek. This project includes materials sourced from the Stasi Mediathek (https://www.stasi-mediathek.de/) and uses these visual materials with permission.

JURY STATEMENT

The jury selected two projects that approach contemporary social and political realities through distinct yet equally compelling visual strategies. 

Escaping by Klára Kusá was recognised for its thoughtful engagement with the relationship between historical memory and contemporary political realities. By combining photographs of former Stasi sites with archival materials documenting attempts to escape the GDR, the project examines mechanisms of surveillance, control and restricted mobility, revealing how systems of power continue to shape individual lives and raising urgent questions about freedom, responsibility and human rights today. 

Glimmers, Feathers and Staring Skies by Joel Jimenez was selected for its subtle and poetic exploration of landscape as a space where personal experience, ecological awareness and careful observation intersect. Through a refined visual language, the project encourages a slower, more attentive way of looking, revealing the extraordinary within the seemingly ordinary.