I invite you to showcase your work with the best thinking and analogue photography in the world. This book project will feature 20 film photographers who will explain their allegiance to this craft. There is no charge for submission and if selected each featured photographer will receive a free copy of the published hardback book by post anywhere on the globe.
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?”
At those moments, you’re 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 concentrate 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?
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. As long as the original ph
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.
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.
Here is a mission statement supplied by FoscoFornio and
another supplied by Aldobranti who will be the lead curator for the project.
Here is a google form for your submission. Please note that it may ask you to login but remember there is no call to have a gmail password. Just persist with using your own email identity ( just remember your own password) and skip the bits where it suggests creating a gmail identity