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 creative photographers to submit projects that reflect on the relationship between people and the spaces they inhabit. This year’s theme challenges participants to explore the concept of "Common Roots," focusing on how the places we live, visit, or imagine shape our lives and define who we are. Contestants are encouraged to interpret the topic through one or more of the following focal points:

Everyday Places: These are the spaces that make up our daily lives—familiar environments like homes, streets, local cafes, or public parks. They are the locations where we spend most of our time, often without giving them much thought. Yet, they hold deep significance, tied to personal memories and collective histories. How can we document these spaces in a way that highlights their significance, especially when we tend to take them for granted? What happens when we rediscover these spaces through a new lens, capturing moments that might otherwise go unnoticed? The challenge here is to explore the emotional and historical weight of these ordinary places, elevating them to something extraordinary through photography.

Popular Places: These well-known locations, whether landmarks, tourist attractions, or cultural symbols, are recognized worldwide and often photographed in predictable ways. From the gondola in Venice to the sunflower fields of Tuscany, these places are constantly presented to us in the same traditional forms. But how can we photograph these iconic locations differently? How can we capture their essence in ways that feel fresh, unique, and thought-provoking? Your task is to break away from the conventional representations of these places and offer a new perspective that reveals something deeper or less seen about them. This could involve focusing on less obvious details or capturing the intersection between the familiar and the unexpected.

Imaginary Places: Some of the most intriguing spaces are those that exist only in the imagination. These places may appear in literature, folklore, or the subconscious, existing only in our dreams or cultural myths. For your project, consider how you might bring these imaginary spaces to life through photography. Using artistic techniques, digital manipulation, or surreal compositions, your work could explore the boundary between reality and fantasy, allowing you to visualize places that are not physically real but that resonate with emotion, meaning, or cultural significance.

The overarching theme of the festival, Common Roots, asks participants to think about how the invisible connections to a place—the deep, cultural, and historical ties—define how we relate to it. These invisible roots, whether embedded in the past, culture, or collective memory, shape our perception of a space and influence how we experience it. How can we uncover and expose these invisible layers through our work, allowing the unseen histories and stories of places to emerge through our photographs? This challenge is about telling the stories of places in a new, authentic, and visually compelling way, making the invisible visible.