The PhMuseum Photography Grant is an annual initiative that recognises the importance of photography and visual storytelling.
Over the years it has grown into a leading photography prize, with previous editions having awarded work by photographers like Max Pinckers, Poulomi Basu, Jacob Aue Sobol, Diana Markosian, and Tomas van Houtryve, among many others. Now in its 11th edition, the initiative is designed to support the production and promotion of visual projects through cash prizes, exhibitions at international festivals, a residency program, educational activities and exposure on online media.
The theme is open. All approaches are welcome, from traditional documentary photography to experimental ways of telling a story or sharing a concept. Applicants retain full image copyrights. You can see all the prizes and learn how to apply below, while you can check FAQs here. Thanks for considering this opportunity and best of luck with your applications!
Winning the PhMuseum Grant was a huge surprise and an injection of confidence, especially during the difficult times many artists were experiencing in Brazil. We had set that series aside for a while because of the pressure the current government is putting on minorities. Having received the award filled us with hope. We were also extremely happy to see how all the other awardees told relevant stories. Stories that should last and cannot be just an intermittent fad. Rodrigo Pinheiro & Gal Marinelli, 1st Prize Recipients, 2021 Edition
plus a projection at Verzasca Photo 2023, Jakarta International Photo Festival 2023, and PhMuseum Days 2023, plus promotion on the PhMuseum channels.
plus a projection at Verzasca Photo 2023, Jakarta International Photo Festival 2023, and PhMuseum Days 2023, plus promotion on the PhMuseum channels.
Awarded by Maria Ptqk
Maria Ptqk, new head curator of Getxophoto, will select a project from all the submissions to be awarded an exhibition during the 17th edition of the festival which will be held in Getxo, Basque Country, Spain in June 2023. In addition to the show production, the winner will receive an artist fee of €400 and accommodation for 2 nights during the Opening Week.
Awarded by PhEST’s Team
PhEST’s team will select a work from all the submissions to be granted a solo show during the 8th edition of the festival to be held in Monopoli, Italy in September 2023.
Awarded by Jenny Nordquist
Landskrona Foto's Director Jenny Nordquist, will select a photographer from all the submissions to be awarded a place for the Landskrona Foto Residency. The program takes place for 6 weeks during the autumn of 2023 in Landskrona, Sweden. The artist in residency receives a grant of 15000 SEK (approximately €1500), travel expenses to and from the home country (economy only), an apartment in Landskrona, and an office space. The successful candidate will commit to producing a unique body of work within the residency period, we encourage all interested applicants to add a paragraph to their submission where they propose a project that relates to Landskrona.
Awarded by Fonderia 20.9’s Team
Fonderia 20.9’s Curators Chiara Bandino and Francesco Biasi will select a project from all the submissions to be exhibit in their gallery in Verona, Italy, in 2023. The recipient will get an artist fee of €200, a budget of €800 euro to cover the exhibition production and travel expenses, while accommodation and food will be provided during the stay in Verona.
Assigned by the PhMuseum Team
Our team will select 6 photographers from all the applicants, who will be granted a 60-minute online portfolio review with a mentor of their choice from the PhMuseum Education.
All the shortlisted works will be projected at Verzasca Photo 2023, Jakarta International Photo Festival 2023, and promoted on the PhMuseum channels.
Photographer and co-founder of J&L Books
Jason Fulford is a photographer and co-founder of J&L Books. He is a Guggenheim Fellow, a frequent lecturer at universities, and has led workshops across the globe. Fulford’s photographs have been described as open metaphors. As an editor and an author, a focus of his work has been on the subject of how meaning is generated through association.
His monographs include Sunbird (2000), Crushed (2003), Raising Frogs for $$$ (2006), The Mushroom Collector (2010), Hotel Oracle (2013), Contains: 3 Books (2016), Clayton's Ascent (2018), The Medium is a Mess (2018) and Picture Summer on Kodak Film (2020). He is co-author with Tamara Shopsin of the photobook for children, This Equals That (2014), co-editor with Gregory Halpern of The Photographer’s Playbook (2014), guest editor of Der Greif Issue 11, and editor of Photo No-Nos (2021).
Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle (MBAL)
Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts Le Locle (MBAL) in Switzerland, she is a writer, curator, editor and lecturer specialising in photography and literature. Her next exhibition at MBAL is entitled The Pleasure of the Text and will open at the end of March 2023. Through her platform Photocaptionist she collaborates with international institutions such as Jeu de Paume, Aperture and Foam. She holds a PhD in ‘Photo-Texts: Critical Intersections in History’, from London’s University of Westminster, which she has transformed into the educational project Word and Image Workshop (WIW) and a touring exhibition entitled The Pleasure of the Text, which will open at the end of March 2023 at MBAL.
Previous curatorial projects include ‘Looking On: New Italian Photography’ at the Ravenna Art Museum (2019), the late Lorenzo Tricoli’s retrospective show ‘The Archive You Deserve’, for Fotografia Europea (2018), the festival Jaipur Photo on ‘Wanderlust’ in India (2017) and the exhibitions ‘Invisible Stratum’ for Tokyo International Photography Festival (2017).
She has won a number of residencies (Fondation Michalski, Cité internationale des arts), awards (Kraszna-Krausz Best Photography Book, Vienna Photo Book Dummy) and in 2016 she was included among the ‘16 female curators shaking things up’ by Artnet after her shows ‘Feminine Masculine’ at the London Art Fair (2016), ‘Peter Henry Emerson: Presented by the Author’, while she was Art Fund Curatorial Fellow of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum (2015) and ‘Amore e Piombo: The Photography of Extremes in 1970s Italy’ at the Brighton Photo Biennial/Photoworks (2014).
Through her alter ego Candida Desideri, a subversive homage to her mother, she writes more experimental stuff such as short stories and prose poems, which have been published within the book ‘Nachbilder: Eine Foto Text Anthologie’ by Spector Books, Zurich University of the Arts and Fotomuseum Winterthur (2020) and Der Greif (2015).
Photographer and Co-Founder of Chose Commune
Born in 1985 in France, Vasantha Yogananthan has produced personal projects which have been published, exhibited and awarded internationally. Piémanson was Yogananthan’s first book, a form that has been central to his work since he began and which led him to co-found the publishing house Chose Commune with Cécile Poimboeuf-Koizumi in 2014. Drawing inspiration from the imagery associated with The Ramayana and its pervasiveness in everyday Indian life, his 7-book project A Myth of Two Souls combines a wide range of techniques, including colour photography, hand-painted photography and collages. Yogananthan has received several awards, including an ICP Infinity Award as Emerging Photographer of the Year (2017) and the Rencontres d’Arles Photo-Text Book Award (2019). In 2021, he was awarded a Juror's Special Mention at the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation Photobook Award for Amma, the seventh and last book of his series A Myth of Two Souls. Yogananthan has been working on a new project in the USA in 2022, funded by the Immersion program by the Fondation d'entreprise Hermès. This new body of work will be exhibited at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson (Paris) and the International Center of Photography (New York) in 2023. Yogananthan is represented by The Photographers’ Gallery Print Sales (London), Jhaveri Contemporary (Mumbai) and Assembly (Houston). His works are included in private and public collections, including the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), the Musée de l’Élysée (Lausanne) and the FOAM Museum (Amsterdam). His books are part of the permanent collection of the MoMA library (New York).
Multi-disciplinary conceptual artist
Max Siedentopf (1991) is a London based multi-disciplinary conceptual artist working across video, photography, sculpture, creative direction and everything in-between and is the founder of the art publication ORDINARY.
From 2013 - 2020 Max Siedentopf has been creative director of the 'legendary and unorthodox' creative agency KesselsKramer, which was founded in 1996 by the dutch artist Erik Kessels, and is the only one that has worked at all three offices and becoming the youngest partner at the age of 25.
Since 2019-ongoing, Siedentopf has been a key creative collaborator of the Italian fashion house Gucci, developing campaigns, the overall brand image and launching special projects such as Gucci's experimental platform Gucci Vault where he was responsible for the naming and overall creative art direction from digital, campaigns to retail spaces.
Max has been described by Vogue Italy as viral artist and his installation Toto Forever was included in artnet’s '10 Extraordinary Artworks You Need to Travel to the Edge of the World to See' next to ‘Prada Marfa’ by Elmgreen & Dragset’s, ‘Yellow Pumpkin’ by Yayoi Kusama’s and ‘Notre Dame du Haut’ by Le Corbusier’s.
In June 2019, Siedentopf starred in the music video for 'Mine Right Now', a song by Norwegian singer Sigrid Max was supposed to direct. This was due to Sigrid’s flight being cancelled, the singer therefore being unable to appear in the video herself and Max ended up starring in instead.
Next to this he is the founder of Ordinary Magazine which was nominated for Magazine Of The Year, Best Art Direction and Best use of Photography by the Stack Awards. For his Gommi 'Psychosis' music video he was awarded the 'Most Bizarre Video' at the Berlin Music Video Awards and was also nominated Best New Director at the UKMVAs. In 2021 Siedentopf won the Impression Award for best digital fashion campaign for his GUCCI ‘#ACCIDENTALINFLUENCER’ SPRING 2020 campaign.
14 Feb 2023
This grant is a great way to get feedback on your work. The judges are all experts on the various uses of the medium. Also the community around it is excellent. Applying allows you to have a deadline and stand behind what they made, which is what I find to be the biggest gift. Miraj Patel, 1st Prize Recipient, 2022 Photography Grant
Winning the under-30 prize helped me continue pursuing my long-term project Madre. The grant allowed me to financially support its realisation while the recognition motivated me to trust my instincts and keep nurturing my practice. It’s through this boost of confidence that I was able to widen my horizons and reach new audiences. Marisol Mendez, New Generation Prize Recipient, 2021 Edition