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

"Braiding Indigeneity" invites photographers, artists, and visual storytellers to revisit how images construct identity, land, and relational memory. Developed within the framework of Der Greif’s Pulse online exhibitions series and grounding itself in the ethos of Issue 19, "I Am, Because of You, Mother Earth," guest-edited by Zanele Muholi, this open call carries that relational ethic forward in conversation with Indigenous visual sovereignties.

Selected participants will join a hybrid workshop integrated into the FUTURES Hub program in Paris, engaging in collaborative image analysis, reciprocal critique, and public auditory sessions.

Apply by September 30 at 11:59 CET

Photo credit: Marco Reghelin.

*The title pays tribute to a reading that inspired us for the Open Call's take: Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass.

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.