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Mobile devices are often the main vehicle through which we document our everyday life. In light of the COVID-19 crisis, with this open call we aim to understand how such an unprecedented situation is redefining the relationship with our home, family and community. Which are our own personal and collective feelings and expectations? Which are the defining values of this historical transition and how we can get out of it stronger and wiser? Below you can see many images that try to give an answer to these questions as selected by our independent juries. Images that tell about these months and suggest our hope for the future. Images that together are defining a collective memory and hopefully will become an inspiration for the world after the crisis and the generation to come.
"Alessandro Gaja's image depicts an ordinary, intimate moment. A family sitting outside in the sun, having lunch together, while the little girl is playing just around the corner. The edge of the circle created a small world within the image, a world of their own, somehow distanced from the larger world. Just like that, the image of one family becomes a universal image. A moment we long for, as if through this image we are looking to the past, how simple normality was, in our day to day lives." - Sarker Protick
"When I saw Alessandro Gaia's photo I recalled the muffled and alienating feeling of the pandemic period. It would be trivial to just mention so, yet I think that many times the sensations are so strong that it becomes difficult to explain them. This is one of the most fascinating things in photography as far as I'm concerned. Moreover, having a better look at the image, I noticed a kind of bubble in the bottom left corner. If you look carefully inside of it you can see something that recalls bacteria or a virus! I find this photograph very complete and sensational on many levels, and it fully describes the feeling that almost all of us experienced during this pandemic." - Piero Percoco
"I love the perspective on this domestic scene — the long lens and the slight distortion lend a surreal feel to the voyeurism, as though one is looking at family life from a planet far away. It makes an otherwise ordinary scene feel like a moment out of The Twilight Zone, which is very apropos for the current moment." - Kate Bubacz
"Vikesh Kapoor's photography is a poetic and graceful vision that stages vulnerability, the vulnerability that characterizes us as human beings. The one we share with the natural world that is not something separate from us but an essential part of our lives." - Francesca Marani
"Vikesh Kapoor's image is a complex photograph. On one hand, it is serene and in peace with the green grass and white flowers. One could almost feel the wind caressing them. On the other hand, the death of the deer with its bent neck is unsettling. The photograph profoundly evokes this duality. It shows the strength of nature and at the same time what humans have done to nature, almost saying everything about the planet today." - Sarker Protick
"This is an image with a lot of layers — it feels futuristic and childlike, it has the composition of a formal portrait and a fleeting feeling, as though the photo was taken in passing. The normal connection between subject and viewer is disrupted by the fact that the subject is himself viewing some unknown escape or future that we cannot see. The elements of awkwardness within the composition of this frame only enhance it — the way the corner of the table points to a gap of skin between socks and trousers, which creates an artificial color line between the yellow walls and table and highlights the contrast to the red cushions, the blue in the walls and his shirt." - Kate Bubacz
The independent jury comprising of Francesca Marani, Kate Bubacz, Piero Percoco and Sarker Protik also awarded 9 honourable mentions for the Mobile Photo Of The Year category:
Kate Bubacz, Senior Photo Editor at BuzzFeed, handpicked a selection of
photographs from the open call to be published on BuzzFeed News, a global news organization
providing original online reporting and video programming across Netflix, Facebook Watch, Twitter,
Snapchat, and more.
View the full feature here
Since 2005, GUP Magazine aims to connect communities around contemporary art and documentary photography. Their Editorial Team has chosen 3 photographers among all of the applicants who will be granted an online individual portfolio feature plus a yearly subscription to the printed magazine.
Yogurt Magazine is a visual arts magazine and curatorial platform focused on contemporary photography. Francesco Rombaldi, Luigi Cecconi and Yogurt editorial team will select 3 photographers from all the submissions to receive an online portfolio feature.
How To Spend It has been part of the Financial Times newspaper for more than
40 years and is now widely regarded as the benchmark for luxury lifestyle magazines. Rasha Kahil,
Creative Director and Katie Webb, Photo Editor will feature a selection of photographs from the open
call on the magazine's website and 100,000-follower Instagram account.
View the full feature here
C41 Magazine will pick 5 of its favourite photographers from the contest submissions and will write a dedicated article on their projects on the website.
PhMuseum's Team will select up to 200 images that will be published in a limited edition photobook. The publication will be the second title of a series of volumes aimed at exploring mobile photography. Here you can see the first volume, published with images from last year's call.
Winners announced! See all the results and order your copy.
PhMuseum's Team will curate a collective exhibition at PhMuseum Lab in Bologna, Italy in May 2021. The event will be accompanied by the book presentation.
This open call is meant to be inclusive and stimulate a reflection on how mobile photography is influencing the medium and becoming part of our everyday life. Join our collective project as many professional and amateur photographers did last year.
More than 400 people joined us for the opening of the show co-created and produced with Spazio Labo'. The show had more than 3,000 visitors and was accompanied by a book presentation with Erik Kessels and Chiara Bardelli Nonino (Vogue Italia).
Read more
Familiar Stranger is our first photobook on the subject, featuring 200 images from the 2019 open call. Self-published in January 2020 with original texts by Erik Kessels and PhMuseum Director's Giuseppe Oliverio, the volume is the first of a series. All the images of the current open call will be considered for the next volume, to be published in March 2021.
Read more
In a time of unprecedented crisis, we are forced to re-think the relationship with ourselves and the Other, to grapple with fears, limits and ultimate existential concerns. I am hoping to see images that allow me to reflect on the sense of belonging to a family/community in a moment of isolation and the role played by camera phones in the communication of this collective experience. Francesca Marani, Judge and Photo Editor at Vogue Italia
Photo Editor at Vogue Italia
Since 2015 she has been part of Vogue
Italia’s photography department. She is a contributor to Vogue.it, photo editor for the
PhotoVogue platform and, alongside Alessia Glaviano and Chiara Bardelli Nonino, she is a
curator of the Photo Vogue Festival. Francesca also manages the production of Vogue Italia’s
photographic exhibitions and creates digital contents for Vogue Italia’s Instagram
account.
In 2018 she curated a talk series about contemporary photography at the
Affordable Art Fair (Milan), she co-curated the exhibition “Italian Panorama” at the
Armani/Silos and was a juror of the Ooshot Award (Paris). Over the past few years Francesca
has been a portfolio lecturer for the Blink Portfolio Review (New York), a juror of the
Photolucida’s Critical Mass and collaborated with the PhMuseum Women Photographers Grant.
In 2019 Francesca took part in “Scouting for India”(Mumbai), the Vogue Talents’
project in collaboration with FAD International Academy, and she was a member of the jury of
Fresh Eyes (GUP magazine). Francesca regularly collaborates with several photography
festivals and schools as portfolio reviewer and lecturer.
Senior Photo Editor at BuzzFeed
Kate Bubacz is the photo director for BuzzFeed News. She works with photographers on feature assignments covering foreign affairs, cultural upheaval and investigations around the world. She also leads the JPG team at BuzzFeed News which covers the photographic community. Previously, she worked at ABC News and The New York Post.
Photographer
Piero Percoco was born in 1987. He grew up in Italy (Bari) but spent a lot of time in Venezuela during his childhood. In 2010 he enrolls in the degree program of Forest and Environmental Sciences of the Faculty of Agriculture, but drops out of the course 2 years after. In the same year, he shoots a photograph of a lightning from a bridge, after spending hours seeking the shot. A visceral reverence to the books of primarily Stephen Shore, William Eggleston and Andrew Miksys has allowed Percoco to break through the so often undermining social barriers of Southern Italy and create an existential perspective that focuses on extracting the magic in the nuances of his everyday. In 2012 he joined for an internship Cesura, a Milan-based collective of photographers founded by Alex Majoli. In 2013 he attended a workshop with Jacopo Benassi, where he was a three- day workshop staff at La Spezia (Italy). Piero shoot most of his pictures with an iphone regularly updating his instagram profile @therainbowisunderestimated.
Artist, Faculty at Pathshala Media Institute, Co-Curator at Chobi Mela
Sarker Protick
has developed a practice that combines the roles of an image-maker, a teacher and
infrequently a curator. His works revolve around the subjects of temporality,
materiality of time and the metaphysical prospects of Light and Space. Working with
Photography, Video and Sound manipulation, Protick has formed a series of works that are
built on long-term surveys rooted in his home country, while simultaneously exploring
ideas that blurs the notion of geopolitical boundaries. Incorporating detailed
observations and subtle gestures, his works propose a subjective space, often minimal,
vast and atmospheric.
Protick is interested in themes such as alteration of land
and border, colonial history and relics and modern ecological emergencies. His
landscapes, portraits and photographic series engage philosophically with the
specificities of personal and regional histories. Protick is the recipient of Joop Swart
Masterclass, Magnum Foundation Fund, Light Work Residency, World Press Photo Award etc.
He has exhibited in museums, galleries and festivals including Hamburg Triennale, Paris
Photo, Singapore Art Week, Riga Photography Biennale, Dhaka Art Summit, 4A Center of
Contemporary Asian Art, Noor der licht, Art Dubai and more.
Sarker Protick is a
faculty member of Pathshala South Asian Media Institute and Co-curator at Chobi Mela
International Festival of Photography.
