Open Calls

The 57th Rencontres d'Arles unfolds under the theme "Des mondes à relire" ("Worlds to Re-read"), an invitation to revisit how photographs construct meaning, memory, and identity. Our collective workshop and in-person face-to-face edition "Read Against the Machine" in collaboration with Foundation Manuel Rivera-Ortiz (MRO) responds to this framework by reclaiming the slow, unpredictable, fundamentally social act of looking at photographs together.

Apply by June 7 at 11:59 CET

Photo credit: Amelie Sachs.

The open call "Inner Landscapes" celebrates Mental Health Awareness Month by inviting lens-based artists to reflect on mental health and its connection to everyday life. It explores how internal experiences are shaped by social, cultural, and environmental contexts, and how they are expressed through image-making.

Selected works will be featured in an online exhibition on Der Greif’s homepage for one month, bringing together diverse perspectives.

As part of Der Greif’s Face-to-Face program, selected artists will also join small group online critique sessions, offering space to share work, exchange feedback, and discuss process with peers.

Deadline: May 10, 2026 at 11:59 CET

Submit

Der Greif has invited Zanele Muholi, supported by Alexander Tutsek-Stiftung, to guest-edit Issue 19.

The theme for the open call is “I Am Because of You, Mother Earth.”

Muholi asks: "What if the environment was not something outside of us, but something we are part of? What if our bodies, histories, and relationships were understood as landscapes shaped by connection rather than separation?"

We invite photographers, writers, poets, and artists to explore what environment means when we move beyond boundaries between self and surroundings.

Why submit?

• Have your work seen by renowned artist Zanele Muholi
• Get the chance to be published in Issue 19 and get a free copy plus additional copies at a highly discounted rate.
• Be part of related events Der Greif will organize in relation to the release of Issue 19 during Paris Photo 2026 and beyond.
• Get the chance to publish an Artist Feature on dergreif.org, a highly-frequented international source of photographic art.

Deadline: June 20, 2026 at 11:59 PM CET

Submit

Guest Room is a monthly online exhibition hosted on Der Greif with open submissions curated by key curators and artists from the field of contemporary photography and visual culture. For this edition, curators Auronda Scalera and Alfredo Cramerotti explore "Shifting Thresholds".

This edition of Guest Room invites photographic and image-based works that engage with displacement as both a lived experience and an aesthetic condition. Displacement may emerge through migration, body transformation, exile or environmental change, but also through more subtle forms: the dislocation produced by digital mediation, algorithmic vision, and the fragmentation of attention in contemporary image cultures. We are interested in artists who explore how images themselves can shift, circulate, and transform across contexts, platforms, and geographies.

Deadline: May 7, 2026 at 11:59 PM CET

Submit

"In Focus" invites artists and publishers to submit recent photobooks and artist books for editorial consideration. This open call creates space for critical and poetic approaches to the photobook as a form of authorship, collaboration, and storytelling. We welcome publications that engage thoughtfully with contemporary life, visual culture, and the material and narrative possibilities of the book. Selected projects will be featured in Der Greif’s editorial platform, offering international visibility and long-term archival presence.

Deadline: June 30, 2026 at 11:59 PM CET

Submit

Photo credits (left to right): Les Rencontres d'Arles 2024 © Amelie Sachs; Leipzig Photobook Festival 2026 © Walther Le Kon.