SHORTLIST ANNOUNCED — BOLD BALTONORDIC DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY

We are honoured to announce the shortlist of the Bold BaltoNordic Documentary Photography open call.

Out of 105 submissions from across the Baltic Sea and the Nordic region, 16 projects have been selected for the shortlist. But before anything else, we want to say a sincere and heartfelt thank you to every author who shared their work with us.

We feel deeply humbled by the trust you placed in us. Especially because so many of the submitted projects carried important, personal and often sensitive stories.

An open call is never only about selection. Behind every submission there is time, dedication, attention, lived experience, doubt, courage, fear and care. We want to acknowledge all of that.

What moved us deeply was not only the visual strength of the works but also the depth and quality of the texts. Many of these were sincere, thoughtful, heartfelt, some humorous and some deeply meaningful, helping us understand not only what the projects show but also why they matter and what they mean to the author.

To all authors who were not selected this time: we hope this will not be the end of our connection. As part of Bold BaltoNordic Documentary Photography, we are developing a digital platform, a space for photographers and visual storytellers to share their submitted work with a wider community of authors, curators, professionals and audiences.

We warmly invite those who wish to stay connected to join this growing network.

The shortlist, in no particular order:
Maria Fynsk Norup (DK)
Iveta Gabalina (LV)
Tadas Kazakevičius (LT)
Jyri Pitkänen (FI)
Leoni Marie Huebner (DE)
Reinis Hofmanis (LV)
Annela Samuel (EST)
Helga Harenstam (SE)
Kacper Bartczak (PL)
Ingerid Jordal (NO)
Mairi Hüüdma (EST)
Filippo Zambon (FI-IT)
Mathilda Frykberg (SE)
Philipp Gallon (DE)
Arturas Morozovas (LT)
Andra Rahe (EST)

To the 16 shortlisted authors: congratulations. As curators, we are grateful and excited to continue working with the shortlist to select the final projects for the first exhibition. We will contact the shortlist directly in the coming weeks if any questions arise or we would like to discuss the work.

Thank you for your openness, your trust and your work.

This is only the beginning. Stay with us.

The jury members were: Agnė Narušytė, an art historian and critic and a professor at the Vilnius Academy of Arts; Hannamari Welling, a Helsinki-based artist-photographer, author, curator, educator, publisher, and founder of the award-winning Raw View magazine, now Raw View Editions; Kristel Aime Laur, co-founder and co-curator of the Juhan Kuus Documentary Photo Centre, a multidisciplinary designer, curator, and researcher working at the intersection of visual culture, narrative environments, and embodied knowledge; Toomas Järvet, co-founder and co-curator of the Juhan Kuus Documentary Photo Centre, and a documentary filmmaker whose work focuses on documentary practices and socially engaged photography and film.