Theme for Guest Room

Guest Room is all about sparking collaboration. For this edition, Hannah Fletcher and Alice Cazenave from The Sustainable Darkroom are joining forces with artist and designer Tamsin Green, founder of the Sustainable Photobook Publishing (SPP) network.

Together, they’ve created the theme: "New Grounds."

This theme considers the critical need to find new grounds for navigating volatile environments, and for building new worlds to come. "New Grounds" speaks to the acknowledgement of the ground as many things; as territory, geopolitics, and multi-species worlds; a series of relations indexing the past, and futures-in-the-making.

"New Grounds" also invites artists thinking with the ground as a means to become located and connected, which may involve unpicking, disassembling and recontextualising. Through the ground we are connected to the earth; on the ground we seek insights and responses. There is no single way to move forward; each person navigates ways of being and belonging.

Our present also calls for new ways of being that center care and collaboration, not only between humans, but also the more-than-human world. We hope to see photography used as a tool to uncover ideas and suggestions of what is to come. Collectively, what "new grounds" can we encounter?

Why submit to Guest Room?

• Be discovered by an expert in contemporary art and photography
• Get published in an online showcase on Der Greif alongside emerging artists from all over the world
• Submit for free or pay a voluntary donation of 8€
• Please note: Images which have been selected for a previous Der Greif opportunity are not eligible for re-submission. We want to support the broadest range of photographers possible and therefore encourage you to submit work that has not yet been selected by our past Guest Curators. Any images which do not comply with these terms will be removed from the selection process.

Voluntary donation

After over a decade of serving the international photography community Der Greif is now finally a registered non-profit. We believe this organizational structure best reflects our artistic and cultural mission. As always, your artistic contribution makes our work on Der Greif possible.

Since starting Guest Room in January 2015, we’ve been working hard to invite a broad range of practitioners, from gallerists to editors and curators. We are convinced that this format is an interesting and low-barrier approach to help artists get their work in front of people who might be interested in working with them. For this reason, we are asking you to consider making a financial contribution as well. That’s why we’re suggesting a voluntary donation of 8€ as a submission fee. 100% of the funds we collect from your donations will go towards helping us continue providing interesting opportunities for the photography community through Guest Room, and thus expand Der Greif.

We believe in inclusivity. We don’t want this suggested donation to stand in the way of your submission. If you are unable to contribute financially, please send an email to voucher-guestroom-2@dergreif.org to receive a voucher code which will allow you to enter for free.

About Hannah Fletcher

Hannah Fletcher is an artist based in the UK. She primarily uses photographic surfaces, chemistries, and waste to explore the social and ecological systems of materials. She founded the Sustainable Darkroom, a charity dedicated to researching and disseminating lower-toxicity photographic materials and methods. She is also co-director of the London Alternative Photography Collective and is represented by Land Art Agency.

About Alice Cazenave

Alice Cazenave is a doctoral researcher and photographic artist based between London and New York. She researches the silver used in film photography, and its links to extractivism and the Anthropocene. She has exhibited internationally and co-directs the Sustainable Darkroom. Here she coordinates research programmes which examine the materials and chemicals manufactured for film photography, and their links to ecological change and colonialism.

About Tamsin Green

Tamsin Green is a London-based artist and designer whose practice combines walking, photography, writing and bookmaking. She is the founder of manual.editions and the Sustainable Photobook Publishing (SPP) network, and is currently a PhD practice-led researcher at the University of Westminster.

About Der Greif Guest Room

Guest Room is a monthly online exhibition with open submissions curated in real-time by personalities from the international photography scene. Der Greif is an award-winning organization for contemporary photography. It is print-publication, online-publication, curatorial team and joint project all at once. Der Greif connects the digital and the analogue, exploring and expanding the borders and limits of image-distribution and -reception in the digital era.