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What Makes this event different?

What will make a successful entry? Avoid art bollocks. You are encouraged to write honestly about your creative method, and about why you work in analog film. We do not charge a submission fee, and we reward your effort by gifting you a copy of the published book, free of all cost and postage anywhere in the world.

Copyright Policy

Beyond the scope of the book project artist retains all rights

Image Usage Rights

Artist grants permission to print image and text in book form, artist grants permission for accredited use of image in promotion of project and book

Call to Photographers for a Book Project

The thoughts of artist film photographers

You are invited to showcase your photography with the best thinking and analogue photography in the world. The book project will showcase 20 film photographers who will share their allegiance to this craft. Submission is free. If selected, each featured photographer will receive a free copy of the published hardback book by post anywhere in the world.

When your head is under a dark cloth, you are peering into a waist level finder; you become aware of people around you staring at you. “Why do you use that gear? Isn't a digital camera easier?”

During moments like those you are absorbed in your job: you can do without the noise… particularly the know-it-all who wants to tell you about a DSLR and lens collection. This project will focus on the other moments when perhaps you are doing more thinking than doing as a film photographer. Of particular interest is the time spent in darkness while you are loading or unloading your camera, getting a sheet of film into a dark slide may have become second nature to you. Unloading a magazine or a cassette into a spiral will now probably be an automatic task -- what are you thinking about?

The act of taking a photograph itself is perhaps no more than the squeezing of a bulb, the pressing of a shutter release but then the waiting begins while you must sit out the development process; or, even to shoot the remaining frames on your film -- do you plan a shot differently for film?. This time of waiting is figuratively a period of darkness before the revelation of the negative, held up to the light, placed on the lightbox. How have you spent this time? How has this time changed you?

FAQ

Can you say more about the book?
The book will be published in the UK by FoscoFornio; having an ISBN, legal deposit copies are made and you may be eligible for DACS payments.

Help! English is not my first language -- Can I submit?
The book will be published in UK English, but we wish to encourage a global entry. You can use a translation program to read the form's questions and then write your submission in your own language. Write simply and honestly, and avoid extravagant language. Our editors will do their best but with a translation system!

Why is this project restricted to analogue photographers?
Of the billions of photographs that are made everyday, a vanishingly small proportion is made on film. We want to explore the reasons why photographers persist against the dis-economics of effort and cost and desist from the use of digital cameras.

Is this call restricted to b&w work only?
Absolutely not, the only requirement is that your work is based in the chemistry and physics of analogue photography

Are you not interested in analogue methods of print preparation?
The photographic print is unquestionably a fantastic art form; it doesn't however bring the delays and periods of waiting that the taking of a photograph onto negative film stock entails

My picture is worth a 1000 words: why do you insist on my text as input to this project?
I accept that your picture is a very beautiful and meaningful image. It is after all why you make photographs. The point is that this project is about process rather than product and part of our understanding of your process is through your words.

What is the timescale of this project?
This call remains open for 13 weeks until 30 June 2022
Our selectors will come to their decision by 31 July and will notify all entrants of their decision.
The successful contributions will pass to our curator and critical reviewer who will complete their work by mid-September.
The book as a whole then passes to production. Publication is expected in the first weeks of November and first mail outs of complimentary copies will begin immediately at that point.

For more information about this photography book project, please visit the Event Website.