Fotograf Zone as you know it is changing in 2027

What we do know is that the current model of Fotograf Zone is no longer financially or humanly sustainable. This is not the result of a single unsuccessful grant decision, nor of any one event in recent months. It is the result of changes and pressures that have been accumulating over many years.

The environment in which professional independent cultural organizations operate has changed fundamentally. Public funding systems no longer reflect the actual demands of running a stable organization: available funding has not kept pace with rising costs, administrative requirements continue to grow, and financing remains difficult to predict. A significant share of public funding is also confirmed and paid only once the year is already underway, making it difficult to plan programmes, staffing, and long-term commitments. At the same time, the sources of income that once supplemented public funding have also changed. The markets for print publications, advertising, and paid online content have undergone a major transformation, and economic models that once worked are losing their viability.

Despite this, over the past several years we have significantly professionalized Fotograf. The festival grew from a local event into an international project. The gallery expanded its programme, its work with audiences, and its professional networks. Our publishing activities moved into a hybrid environment, and we created the digital platform Fotograf.zone, including an archive spanning more than two decades of Fotograf Magazine. Projects that had previously operated separately were brought together under one shared identity, and we built an extensive network of collaborations in the Czech Republic and abroad.

But the quality and scale of these activities can also obscure their true cost. We have covered the gap between the real costs of operating and the resources available to us through our own income, savings, and, above all, the extraordinary commitment of a small team and many external collaborators who have long worked under conditions that do not reflect the true value of their labour. Many roles essential to running a cultural organization — production, management, administration, and technical support — are difficult or sometimes impossible to fund adequately through public grants, even though high-quality programming cannot exist without them.

The result is a model that continues to produce strong exhibitions, a festival, and publications on the outside, while internally relying on low pay, insecurity, and the long-term overburdening of the people who make this work possible. We have experienced the limits of this model personally. Burnout and permanent financial uncertainty are not conditions we are willing to accept as the price of professional work in culture.

For this reason, we have decided not to keep every activity going at any cost. This is a difficult and consequential decision. Fotograf Festival, Fotograf Magazine, and the gallery each have their own history and an established place within the Czech photography scene. But continuing them in their current form would mean continuing to pass the consequences of insufficient funding on to the people who create them. We no longer want to do that.

This does not mean that everything Fotograf has built over almost a quarter of a century is disappearing. What remains is our know-how; our relationships with artists, curators, institutions, and audiences in the Czech Republic and abroad; the Fotograf.zone platform with its extensive archive of articles; and our international networks, including the European platform FUTURES.

We cannot yet say exactly what Fotograf Zone will become in 2027, and we do not want to disguise that uncertainty with optimistic language. Over the coming months, we will decide which parts of our existing work make sense to preserve and under what conditions they can continue.

What is already clear is that this change will also involve a significant transformation of the team and the organization’s leadership. Some of the people who have shaped and led Fotograf over many years will be leaving, while others will continue only in a more limited capacity. The changes will also affect the current executive and operational leadership.

After almost 25 years, what matters to us remains the same: supporting contemporary photography and the people who create it, sharing knowledge, connecting the Czech and Central European scene with the international context, and creating opportunities that would otherwise not exist.

We are now looking for a different way to do this work — at a scale and within a model that can be financed sustainably, maintained to professional standards, and made sustainable for the people behind it.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has helped shape the community around Fotograf over the past 25 years: everyone who has contributed to our activities or attended them, read our articles, and shared in both the small and the major successes along the way. We are also deeply grateful for the support and patience you have shown us during this difficult period. It means a great deal to us.

If you would like to support our future work and help us build a new, sustainable model for Fotograf Zone, you can contribute via Darujme.cz. Thank you.

On behalf of the Fotograf Zone team
Markéta Kinterová, Marie Rozmánková, Pavel Matěj, Barbora Vanická Čápová, Barbora Poláchová, Klára Kudláček, Tereza Vacková, Aurika Bugaeva, Sandra Faragula