Open Call

Since 2006, the C/O Berlin Foundation has been promoting young photographers and photography theorists with the annual C/O Berlin Talent Award. The contest is divided into two categories – practical photography (Artist), and analytical writing (Theorist). 

While this year’s submissions for the Artist category have already closed, the C/O Berlin Foundation is now looking for theorist perspectives. Entries can be made in the form of two previously published sample texts, which should be a contextual reflection of the award’s central theme: New Documentary Strategies in contemporary photography. 

The successful applicant stands to receive a 3,000-euro grant, coupled with the opportunity to interview this year’s Artist category winner and write an essay on the selected photo project. This will culminate in a joint publication released by Spector Books (which, in turn, will accompany the winning artist’s solo exhibition). 

In recent decades, there has been a major paradigm shift in documentary photography, from the question of ‘what’, to the question of ‘how’. The C/O Berlin Talent Award aims to encourage an analytical examination of the narrative strategies employed by emerging photographers of the modern day. 

The selection of this year’s Artist category winner has already been completed; their work addresses the role of language and symbols in colonial power structures: through an interconnection of past and present, the project highlights how the colonial suppression of Africa continues to be reflected in ‘Western’ models of communication to this day.