fotodoks open call 2027

FOTODOKS festival for contemporary documentary photography in Munich (Germany) is returning in October 2027. The thirteenth edition is rooted in an open call for projects that reflect on care and its connections to politics, emotions and intimate relationships at a time when 'community' and 'belonging' are buzzwords at the centre of discourses which often lack clear meaning when stripped of substance by branded campaigns and glossy, moral marketing appropriations. 

Care can be emotional, physical or psychological, and it can also have social and relational dimensions. It is culturally charged, with its understanding changing across relationalities. It is also interdependent on other spheres: humans, environments and governments are all part of a single body operating on this fragile concept. Focusing on care is not necessarily sentimental, but is essentially affective. Embracing it can reconnect us with others and transform our relationship with the world and knowledge, sometimes as a burden, some others as a joy in all spheres it distributes across: labour, affection, ethics and politics.

We are seeking existing lens-based documentary-driven stories of care which suggest photorealistic and honest intention of engaging with care and its meanings debated, unpacked, and reenacted in the present.

How does documentary photography intertwine with today's imaginaries of care when welfare state models have been dismantled, depriving citizens of care, ‘self-care’ is a slogan promoted through capitalist stakes for overworking bodies? How are they rejected by major media and circulation platforms, and how do they find their form in resonant contexts? Is care a practice of freedom or one constrained by ethics and morality?