Fotografia Calabria Festival Award 2025

• Fotografia Calabria Festival

• Deadline: May 2nd, 2025

• Theme: Shared Root: Places

• Prize: €3,000+ Exhibition in Italy + Publication

• Entry Fees: Yes

• REGISTRATION: CLICK HERE

The IV edition of the “Common Roots: Places” festival invites photographers to reflect on the deep, often hidden connections we have to the spaces around us. By exploring the profound relationship between people and places, contestants are encouraged to submit photographic projects that explore one or more of the following themes, each offering a unique lens through which to look at the world:

Everyday Places: We all live within and interact with spaces that may seem mundane or ordinary at first glance—our homes, streets, and everyday surroundings. Yet these places hold immense significance in our personal and collective histories. Whether they are areas we’ve come to take for granted or places that we now wish to capture and immortalize, the everyday spaces we inhabit shape who we are. For your photographic project, consider how these places contribute to your identity or how they’ve changed over time. Think about how you can capture the essence of these environments in a way that not only documents them but also reflects their deeper emotional and historical resonance.

Popular Places: These are the places that everyone recognizes—the landmarks, tourist attractions, or landscapes that are perpetually photographed in a very familiar way. While their iconic nature makes them easy to identify, the challenge lies in photographing them from a fresh perspective. How can you reveal a new side of a well-known place, showing it in a way that hasn’t been seen before? Whether it's by focusing on hidden details, capturing the interaction between people and the space, or portraying it in a novel light, your task is to reimagine the well-known, showing how it can be more than just a postcard image.

Imaginary Places: Some places don’t physically exist but are born from the realms of imagination, folklore, or cultural stories. These places can evoke powerful emotions, ideas, and dreams, even though they are intangible. This theme invites you to explore how you can bring these imagined spaces into visual form. Whether through surreal photography techniques, artistic compositions, or digitally manipulated images, the goal is to explore the boundaries between reality and fantasy, giving life to spaces that exist only in the mind.

This festival seeks to challenge participants not only to explore places as physical spaces but to delve into the invisible roots of these places—the unseen threads that connect us to them through history, culture, and collective imagination. These roots are shaped by past experiences, myths, and stories passed through generations, and they influence how we experience places today. How do these intangible roots define our perception and relationship with the places we inhabit? How can photography uncover and make visible these deeper layers of meaning, telling the stories of places in innovative and authentic ways?