internationale photoszene köln 2025: feelings & photography

Once again, Internationale Photoszene Köln issues an Open Call which will culminate in a group exhibition for the Photoszene Festival in May 2025 in Cologne. The search is on for works of art that engage with the theme of “Feelings & Photography”.

The Open Call focuses on contemporary phenomena in photography, and simultaneously takes a look at what stirs our feelings in the world. Equally, it poses the question of what, under what circumstances, prompts our compassion. Feelings are one of the last specifics of human – or natural – life and appear to be a significant marker of differentiation against the supremacy of machines. At the same time, feelings are quite deliberately incorporated into media-based and visual communications, and algorithms get daily emotional reactions out of us as consumers of images. They are something internal, but shaped by society at the same time; feelings are profoundly personal and yet not private; feelings are political dynamite and are simultaneously often negated; feelings influence life paths and create new visibilities; feelings form connectedness and transform social structures at the same time. In short: Feelings mould our existence and our togetherness in the world.

Questions we pose for guidance:

• What role can photography play during engagement with feelings and what role do feelings play in contemporary photographic concepts?
• How do feelings find their way into the picture and in what way do they reach beholders?
• And all other open questions that can be additionally raised and answered!

Although feelings, by definition, are immaterial and subjective, photography can make them visible, experienceable and comprehensible – and stir and amplify them, too. Every day, through being disseminated in the media, the potentials of photographic images influence our entire life sphere; they convey to us emotions, states of mind, attitudes and equally, perspectives onto what prompts our feelings.