OPEN CALL

Jodi Kwok (HK/GB) is a UK-based curator and cultural producer working across photography, moving image, digital media, and socially engaged practice. As Curator at QUAD, where she also works across FORMAT International Photography Festival, she curates exhibitions, commissions new work, and develops residencies and public programmes through international and cross-sector collaborations. Alongside her institutional practice, she develops independent curatorial projects and contributes to portfolio reviews, photobook markets, festival and exhibition catalogues, and international open-call juries. Her work focuses on cross-cultural dialogue and politically engaged contemporary art. Recent projects include Becky Beasley: A Gentle Man (Part II) (1975–2029) (2026), FORMAT25 (2025), Henry Driver: WaterPortals (2025), REFLECTOR (2024), FORMAT24: Future Now (2024), Petra Szemán: Towards a New Monomyth (2024), and LingFei Ren: From That Day On (2023). Photo © Orisunayo Akinnaran

Enrico Stefanelli is a photographer, journalist, curator and teaches photography in workshops. He was the co-founder and, for 7 years, the artistic director of the international festival of photography and video art “Lucca Photo Fest” which was established in2 005 and currently the founder and artistic director of Photolux Festival, the biennial of photography in Lucca, Italy. He has conceived “Faces – Portraits in the 20th Century” exhibition and curated several exhibitions at the Lucca Photo Fest such as, Tim Hetherington, Jan Saudek, Michel Comte, Horst P. Horst, Kenro Izu, VII Agency, Nobuyoshi Araki, Boris Mikhailov, Joel-Peter Witkin, Ernst Haas, Bettina Rheims, Andres Serrano, Stanley Greene, David Douglas Duncan, Vivian Maier, Paolo Verzone, Albert Watson “Maroc”. He curated the exhibition “Cadets” by Paolo Verzone within “Les Rencontres de la Photographie” in Arles. Enrico has been appointed as member of the Jury for Leica Oskar Barnack Award, Germany; FOTODOC Center for Documentary Photography at Sakharov center, Russia; Photolucida Critical Mass, Oregon, USA; Gomma Grant, Great Britain. Head On Festival, Sydney, Australia; Kuala Lumpur International Photoawards, Malaysia; Lens Culture, The Netherlands. He has been appointed as an expert for portfolio reviews in many places : Les Rencontres d'Arles, CENTER Santa Fe, Fotofestiwal, Lodz, Poland; 16e China International Photographic Art Festival, Zhengzhou; Backlight Photo Festival ,Tampere, Finland; FotoFest, Houston, USA; Auckland Festival of Photography, New Zealand; Festival de la Luz, Buenos Aires, Argentina; FestFoto, Porto Alegre, Brazil. He was member of the Nominating committee of Jopp Swart Masterclass and for “6 x 6 Program” at the World Press Photo Foundation until 2018. He is a permanent member of the Nominating Committee for the Leica Oscar Barnack Award and for the Prix Pictet.

D. M. Terblanche (b. 1998, South Africa) is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist working primarily in photography. Their practice focuses on narrative documentary and portraiture, drawing from storytelling traditions across media to explore both personal and constructed realities. They began with cellphone self-portraits, developing a preference for analogue processes while centring portraiture as an intimate space for self-reflection and confronting the past. Photography serves Terblanche as both personal and political, exploring queer identities and the disquiet following a late autism diagnosis. Their work channels vulnerability into imagery between introspection and distortion, addressing trauma and uncertainty with raw emotional honesty. Influences include Nan Goldin, Ren Hang, and Jo Ractliffe. In 2025, a selection of their work was presented by Saint Laurent Babylone, as curated by Anthony Vaccarello, Paris, and they were selected for Gen Z: Shaping a New Gaze, an international group exhibition by Photo Elysée. They were one of ten international winners of Magnum x Polaroid – Real Life is Not Black and White (2024), with work exhibited at Paris Photo 2024, and previously received the Emergentes 2023 – International Photography Award Encontros da Imagem. Their work has been featured in GUP Magazine's Fresh Eyes 2024 and Then There Was Us – Ones to Watch 2023. In 2026, Terblanche was named an inaugural recipient of the New Eyes Award, presented by the Roger Ballen Foundation at the Roger Ballen Centre for Photography in Johannesburg. Terblanche is a longstanding member of Through the Lens Collective and participated in the PhMuseum Criticae Masterclass (2022/2023).

Born 1987 in Saitama and raised in Gunma, Japan. Mari Katayama graduated with a Master’s degree from the Department of Intermedia Art at Tokyo University of the Arts in 2012. At the core of Mari Katayama’s practice is living everyday within her own body, which she uses as a living sculpture, mannequin and lens through which to reflect society. The combination of Katayama’s hand-sewn objects, sculptural pieces, and photography challenges viewers to question the body and its complex relationship with the surrounding environment and society. Taking hand-sewn objects as a point of departure, Mari Katayama's work extends to photography, video and installation. Her creative practice is an act of ascertaining the multi-layered society, landscape and special roles each of us has - all of which are interwoven and resonating with each other. Katayama's hand-sewn objects appear repeatedly in her self-portraits. Each time they change form and function, as if making the norms and gazes inherent in society visible. In the making of photographs, Katayama always releases the shutter herself: by actively engaging with the relationship of 'taking/being taken', she examines the boundaries and dynamics between the self and the other. Using settings constructed with mirrors or her own room as the stage for photography, Katayama reflects not only on connections and frictions when relationships are built, but also on a much broader, overarching system - even the wor;ld itself - that lead to such a relational network. Through these processes, she questions the nature of boundaries: the relation between 'I' and 'you', what constitutes 'correctness', and where the line 'natural' and 'artificial' lies. Since 2011, Katayama has led the High Heel Project, which proclaims 'freedom of choice.' In this project, she aims to ensure that everyone can make choices based on their own will, regardless of their physical condition or ability, and to expand the range of options that underpin this freedom. In addition to her artistic practice, she works as a singer, model and public speaker, broadening the points of contact where artistic expression intersects with society. Photo by H.

Sean Cham is an artist and historian working across photography, performance, installation, and site-specific intervention. His research-led practice examines the construction of power and historical narratives through speculative fiction and collaging, centred on interrogating the archive as material and institution. Recent exhibitions include Foam, Amsterdam; New Art Exchange, Nottingham; Saatchi Gallery, London; and DECK, Singapore. He has participated in the Wuhan Biennale, Singapore International Photography Festival, Athens Photo Festival, Guangzhou Image Triennial, Addis Foto Fest, and Landskrona Foto Festival, with works commissioned by Singapore Art Museum, Singapore Fringe Festival, The Future of Our Pasts Festival, and NUS Centre For the Arts. Recent honours include the LensCulture Critics' Choice Award and ROSL Photography Award. He was selected as a Foam Talent in 2026. Cham is a Tutor (Research) at the Royal College of Art, London. He holds a PhD in History of Art from Birkbeck, University of London, undertaken with London's National Gallery.