Open Calls

Guest Room is Der Greif's online exhibition format featuring open submissions curated by leading figures in contemporary photography. It is designed to foster collaboration, spark creative exchange, and amplify new voices in visual culture under a given theme. For this edition, art historian, curator, and professor at ECAL Claus Gunti and visual artist Visvaldas Morkevičius propose the theme "Seeing with Emotions".

Looking at images on social media – scrolling through ASMR accounts, images of warfare, food porn, and TikTok trends – often triggers overlapping, frequently paradoxical emotional responses, and a generally dark mood. Joy, expectation, satisfaction, disgust, indignation: all are channeled within our scrolling habits and monetized. How can images still convey the one thing we can claim to be real in our lives, thus our emotions?

Deadline: September 22, 2026 at 11:59 PM CET

Submit

In honor of the International Day of Awareness of Food Loss and Waste (September 29) we invite lens-based artists to critically and creatively explore the intersections of food imagery, consumption, and culture. Extended Deadline: September 14, 2026 at 11:59 PM CET Submit

Photo by Varvara Uhlik

Fondament and Der Greif invite you to peer behind the curtain of the everyday. "Ich seh' etwas, was du nicht siehst" explores the multifaceted layers of social life in Germany, taking its title from the German version of the game "I spy with my little eye."

We are looking for photographs and photographic works that tell more than one story and leave room for different readings. Images that don't just offer a single, clear-cut explanation, but allow for multiple perspectives. We are seeking submissions that make this tension visible: between one's own gaze and a possible counter-gaze, between perception and interpretation. That's why we deliberately ask you: What do you see that others don't?

Fondament is a non-profit organisation dedicated to making poverty and social inequality visible and to strengthening photography and art as tools for reflection and change. Working with networks across art, culture, and the social sector, Fondament creates spaces for dialogue and initiates creative projects.

For additional background information in German on "Ich seh' etwas, was du nicht siehst," please visit Fondament.

Deadline: September 1, 2026 at 11:59 PM CET Submit

This open call for photobooks creates space for critical and poetic approaches to artist books and other kind of publications as a form of shared 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 "In Focus" column, offering international visibility and long-term archival presence.

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

Submit

Photo: Amelie Sachs.