Brave New Visions: Creativity as Rebellion

A Global Open Call by PhotoVogue

This year’s PhotoVogue Global Open Call embraces creativity as rebellion, inviting photographers and video makers to use image-making to challenge indifference, disrupt conventions, and expand visual storytelling.

When
May 14, 2026 to September 11, 2026 (11:59 PM CET)

Where
Online here on Picter.

Who
Open to all artists aged 18 and above.

What
We welcome photography, video, and multimedia projects across all genres, including fashion, documentary, portraiture, fine art, and experimental practices.
We are looking for work that expresses a clear point of view, whether through the ideas it explores, the emotions it evokes, or the strength of its visual language. This can take many forms, from powerful storytelling to images that stand out for their aesthetic impact.

Why
At a time when images are constantly produced and quickly forgotten, this open call invites artists to create work that resists repetition, holds attention, and makes something felt

Grants & Opportunities

• $12,000 in total grants awarded to three artists
• Presentation at the next PhotoVogue Festival
• Potential publication across Vogue's global editions
• Participation in PhotoVogue Virtual Portfolio Reviews

We are living through a time marked by violence, injustice, and acceleration. Wars continue. Atrocities unfold. Divisions deepen. Uncertainty grows.

And yet, even as the world becomes harder to bear, images move faster than ever. They accumulate, repeat, and dissolve. The more we see, the less we feel. A sense of déjà vu takes hold. A growing numbness. A quiet apathy.

One crisis follows another, and what should shake us risks being absorbed into the endless flow. What is urgent becomes familiar. What is unbearable risks becoming background.

In this landscape, it becomes increasingly difficult to create work that holds attention, that remains, and that leaves a trace. This is true across visual culture, from documentary to fashion, from magazines to art practices. This is not only because of the speed at which images are consumed, but also because these visual forms carry long histories. They are bound by old rules and expectations that make surprise difficult to sustain.

At the same time, creative work unfolds within systems that often reward caution. Across culture, from publishing to cinema to fashion, what is unfamiliar is softened, delayed, or excluded. Too often, the pressure is not to go further, but to remain legible, acceptable, and marketable.

And yet, this is precisely when new ways of seeing become necessary.
The question is no longer simply how to produce images, but how to create images that matter. And perhaps more urgently: how to respond.

As artists and image-makers, how do we react to this condition? What do we choose to put into the world? What kind of images can still interrupt the noise and resist indifference?

The answer is not what is expected. It is not what feels safe. It is what one has the courage to make visible now, in relation to the world we are living in.

Throughout history, moments of rupture have generated new artistic languages. These have never been simply styles, but responses to conditions that demanded other forms, other gestures, other ways of seeing and saying. Today, the conditions are different, shaped by a globalized and hyper-connected image economy where everything circulates at once and at speed. What emerges may not be a unified movement, but a dispersed and urgent search across practices.

The Invitation

This open call does not ask for a theme to illustrate. It asks for a position. It asks for a position in relation to the world as it is. In relation to what one refuses. In relation to what one longs for, questions, resists, imagines, or defends.

There is no single answer. It may take the form of intimacy, care, or attention. It may take the form of confrontation, rupture, or refusal. It may involve invention, disobedience, new visual languages, new aesthetics, and the imagining of new worlds.

What matters is not whether the work belongs to fashion, art, documentary, photography, or video. What matters is the force, the urgency, and the necessity behind it.

To create in this context also means allowing oneself a deeper freedom. A freedom from repetition. A freedom from expectation. A freedom from approval. It means creating without the need to please.

At a time when so much is made to disappear into the stream, this open call is an invitation to resist that disappearance. Create from urgency, not habit. Create from conviction, not compliance.

Do not illustrate the world as it is. Answer it.

Do not do so because images alone can repair what is broken, or because they must shock in order to matter. Do so because they can still make visible, still make felt, and still make present.

We seek forms that unsettle or console, disturb or illuminate, confront or accompany. We seek images that carry the force of a real encounter. Images that do not soften themselves in order to be received. Images that insist, against indifference, that something remains at stake.

Because to see, and to make others see, is still a profound form of responsibility. And, perhaps now more than ever, an act of courage.

How to submit

Who We're Looking For?

We invite photographers and video makers from around the world whose work engages with the present through a distinct and compelling visual language. Across all genres, from fashion to documentary, portraiture, fine art, and beyond, we are looking for practices that carry a strong point of view and a sense of necessity.

Eligibility & Submission Period

• Submissions are free and open on Picter Thursday May 14th until Friday September 11th (closing at 11:59 PM CET).
• The open call is open to all artists aged 18 and above.
• If you have previously applied to a PhotoVogue Open Call, we encourage you to submit a new project.

Accepted Mediums & Themes

📷 Photography, 🎥 Video, and 🎞️ Multimedia projects across all genres– from fashion to documentary, portraiture, fine art, and beyond – exploring how women see and are seen.

❌ AI-generated works are not eligible.

You may submit:

• A series of up to 15 images, or a combination of images and video in the case of multimedia projects

and/or

• A 60-second video trailer

Grants & Opportunities

Three artists whose work challenges conventions and expands creative possibilities will receive a total of $12,000 in grants:

• $6,000 – Outstanding Vision Grant  For an artist pushing creative boundaries.

• $4,000 – Vision Grant
  For an artist with a compelling and unique perspective.

• $2,000 – Rising Voice Grant
  For an emerging artist showing originality and promise.

Recognition & Exposure

Selected artists will:

• Be at the next edition of the PhotoVogue Festival
• Have the opportunity to be published in Vogue editions worldwide
• Have the opportunity to participate in the next PhotoVogue Virtual Portfolio Reviews

 Stay tuned for more opportunities and updates throughout the open call!

About PhotoVogue

PhotoVogue is a global Condé Nast initiative dedicated to supporting artists and shaping a more conscious visual culture. Through its network of 32 markets and partners, it offers opportunities for publication, commissioning, exhibitions, and public programming.

Its mission is to champion talent, foster diversity, and promote visual literacy, contributing to a more just, ethical, and inclusive image-making landscape. Through both global and regional open calls, PhotoVogue continues to discover and amplify voices across geographies and communities.