Experiments, Urgency, Depth: What Judges Value In Today's Visual Projects

Charlotte Cotton, Carmen Winant, Rafal Milach, Sergio Valenzuela Escobedo from the main panel, PhEST directors Arianna Rinaldo and Giovanni Troilo, PhMuseum founder Giuseppe Oliverio and Getxophoto curator Maria Ptqk share their perspective and approach.

One of the most defining elements of any open call is the panel of judges. At each PhMuseum Photography Grant, we gather a different array of experts to select work they consider valuable. Not only does the diversity of their experience, backgrounds, and expertise affect each edition's final result – it also shapes a conversation that changes every year. Understanding a judge's vision can offer insight for artists who are considering applying: we hence reached to this edition's panel to learn more about their angle and areas of interest.

"I’m interested to see projects where the form that a visual story takes is a dynamic ride that brings the best of legacy editorial conventions into the new and wild space of visual narratives that we are entering", says curator and writer Charlotte Cotton

When it was first invented, cinema needed to explain everything. Film editing guided the viewer through every movement, ensuring they understood how each moment led to the next. As we gradually learned the mechanics of this language, it became increasingly elliptical – our brains could bridge the gaps between actions, leaving more space for ambiguity. Similarly, photography operates through conventions that have become so deeply assimilated we often forget they exist. As a curator and writer who has contributed in shaping the vision of museums and galleries, Charlotte Cotton's historical eye to photography encourages work that engages with these structures, reminding us that – once recognised and mastered – they can be loosened, contradicted and undone, transforming our perception of visual narratives into something we might not have seen yet.

"I'm looking for applicants who make interventions into the medium itself", adds artist and the Roy Lichtenstein Endowed Chair of Studio Art at the Ohio State University Carmen Winant encouraging experimentation

Carmen Winant’s artistic practice engages with found imagery, most often related to the body, reproductive care, and labor. In her books and installations, images do not feel like sacred, untouchable entities. Instead, they are raw, mutable material – ready to become. They transform into sculptures, into pieces of monumental image atlases, they are woven into textile pieces or into the argument of a visual essay. The evolution they undergo awakens us to their political and instrumental power. We see them as active signifiers that can unveil things about the world, and teach other things about images themselves. Looking largely at photographic practices today, medium experimentation involves countless techniques and methodologies. What they often share is the ability to slip within the nets of what we believe images are, allowing them to enter the world as something entirely else.

"I’ll be looking for socially concerned projects that try to respond to burning issues we’re facing across various geographies", points visual artist Rafal Milach stressing on the importance of engaged narratives

Language bears meaning as long as there is something to which it refers. Within this conversation, the photographer, visual artist, and curator shifts attention from the medium back to the relevance of the issues it addresses. The tension between society and power structures has always been at the core of Rafał Milach’s work, who is a professor at the Krzysztof Kieślowski Film School of the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland, as well as the founder of the Archive of Public Protests and the Sputnik Photos collective, and a member of Magnum Photos. In the current political climate, we have seen an increasing number of bodies of work addressing full-scale wars, human rights violations, and systems of repression and control. Photojournalism appears to have surged back, enriched by the experimentation of contemporary documentary practices, proving that we still need photography as a tool to document the world and act within it. How can this be done effectively and responsibly at a time when images have increasingly lost their anchor to truth, and when the political implications of representation are clearer than ever? We expect this edition of the Photography Grant to continue pushing this reflection forward, responding to urgency without collapsing complexity.

"In a landscape saturated with projects that look increasingly alike, I am drawn to works that move into experimental territories, reimagining narrative and visual language. Engaging with the darkness within the camera feels essential to me. Photography is not enough", adds artist and researcher Sergio Valenzuela-Escobedo

We are flooded by images and anaesthetised by them. We often encounter things through pictures before experiencing them directly, while social media set trends and flatten visual language. It is harder, yet more urgent than ever to find ways to unsee, and imagine things truly new. As an artistic director, co-founder of doubledummy studio, and member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA), Valenzuela-Escobedo bridges a historical vision with a strong attentiveness to new languages and emerging voices. His position and statement urge us to centre imagination as a driving force of artistic practice. He reminds us that art cannot abdicate honesty, nor should it abandon invention, just as it must not shy away from failure and opacity. In this context, moving beyond photography does not imply abandoning the medium, but rather stretching it – allowing it to collide with other forms, materials, and narrative strategies. Reimagining how stories are told becomes as urgent as the stories themselves.

"We are looking for a coherent body of work where visual language serves a deeper purpose – images that express timeless voices and gestures, that not only challenge the boundaries of the medium but  provoke a profound intellectual and emotional awakening", says Lodz Fotofestiwal's co-founder Krzysztof Candrowicz

Candrowicz and Mafalda Ruao will invite an artist to join the Polish photography festival and take part in Photo-Match, a democratic platform for portfolio reviews based on short presentations and one-on-one exchanges with photography professionals. By placing dialogue at its core, Photo-Match stands as proof that systems can be changed from within, by advancing ideas that rethink hierarchies and challenge modes of functioning we often take for granted. Candrowicz’s activist background is reflected in his curatorial practice, which promotes collectivity and clear values at a time of widespread injustice and growing individualism. The same clarity of intention can be an extremely valuable aspect of artistic practice: being true to one’s cause and placing narrative at its service. Last year, Candrowicz and Ruao invited British-Iranian photographer Aria Shahrokhshahi with his project Wet Ground – here you can read more about his experience in Łódź.

"We aim to explore multilayered work with a strong conceptual approach that could engage our audience and benefit from the dialogue that can arise when the perspective of a curator meets the research of a visual artist", comments PhMuseum Artistic Director Giuseppe Oliverio  

The works exhibited at PhMuseum Lab have always been diverse in nature: we have seen documentary projects such as Jean-Marc Caimi and Valentina Piccinni’s Güle Güle, deeply personal narratives such as Sayuri Ichida’s Fumiko, and more conceptual and aesthetic approaches, such as in Sander Coers’ Eulogy or Matthieu Croizier’s That Moment When You Can See the Crack in the World. What draws them together is the strength of their approach, and the willingness to play with how photography can encounter the public. We see curation as an opportunity to extend an artist’s research, embodying its concepts through structures, paths, and photographic objects. In order for this to happen, the selected projects stem from a very clear and powerful idea that can be translated through material exploration. This practice might involve high-end papers and frames as much as it can disrupt those structures and call for a more experimental methodology. Openness is a key to this process: in the artist's philosophy, and in their work's ability to lend itself to interpretation. Head here to read about Matthieu Croizier's exhibition, selected in 2024 and produced in January 2025.

"We look for originality and depth. The work needs to connect with the annual theme of the festival, but surprise us with a different perspective, or unexpected turn. Since the grant itself does not have a theme, we often encounter a serendipitous match!", says PhEST curator Arianna Rinaldo

Setting a theme for a festival allows to forge new connections between ideas, practices and materials. Within this process, an open call acts as a powerful expansion, bringing together projects that might not otherwise come to the curator’s attention. Each year, Arianna Rinaldo and PhEST Artistic Director Giovanni Troilo look for the right encounter among all submissions, ready to welcome a project into the network of PhEST’s next edition. The festival is rooted in its territory – the town of Monopoli in Puglia, southern Italy – and in the idea of nourishing the Mediterranean with new, original imagery. “We are not looking for answers; we are seeking new questions,” Troilo further explains. “We look for projects that emerge from an original standpoint, capable of overturning our collective imagination and proposing alternatives. Well-structured bodies of work, ready to communicate with a wide public and to take shape within PhEST’s spaces,” he adds. In 2024, they selected Matthias Jung’s project exploring the communal dream of Esperanto. More about his experience can be found here.

"For the upcoming edition of Getxophoto, celebrating the 20th anniversary of the festival, we look for projects reflecting on the idea of Reset: re-booting the system, renewing the gaze, revisiting history, reviewing personal or collective experiences to start again with a fresh new perspective", explains the Basque festival curator Maria Ptqk 

After Pause and Play, Getxophoto proposes Reset. Less about erasure, and more about recalibration, the theme invites to question what has become naturalised or invisible and propose new ways of seeing, feeling, and thinking. Last year's edition welcomed Ann Shelton's project jane says – a photographic garden of medicinal plants tied to women's reproductive histories. Her photographs were hung in two public locations, a school and a local market. Displayed from the school’s windows, they completely transformed the building’s presence on the street. Festival exhibitions such as those at Getxophoto are very much about reinhabiting space, offering opportunities to shift elements that are otherwise stable in the perception of a town. When they encounter the layered histories of a place, such interventions can create a clash or resonance. This was the case with Ann Shelton’s reflection on knowledge – read more about it here.

Submissions for the PhMuseum 2026 Photography Grant are open until 19 February at phmuseum.com/g26. We wish these considerations can inspire you to present your work in the most honest way, searching for the deepest layers and motivations at its basis. When refining your submissions, you can check out our Tips and Mistakes to Avoid guide, as well as the considerations of Last Year Price Recipients on receiving the grant.

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Over the past 13 years, the PhMuseum Photography Grant has become a key international award, recognized for championing contemporary photography and for fostering emerging talent through financial support, exhibitions at major festivals, educational programs and wide online visibility. More information and applications are available at phmuseum.com/g26.