We are excited to present the 20 winners of this year’s open call, which took place under the theme ‘Anthropocene: Hybrid Realities’. The selected photographers stood out for their critical explorations of the hybrid realities of the Anthropocene, revealing the fragile, shifting boundaries between the organic and the artificial, control and collapse, human intervention and ecological vulnerability.
These projects will be on display in the main exhibition in the Colonnade Hall at the Academy of Fine Arts’ studio building. Most of the artists will be coming to Vienna for the opening weekend of Rotlicht festival, when our visitors will have the chance to meet them and take part in guided tours of the exhibition, during which the artists themselves will present their works.
This years’ Grand Prix Winner is BEIHUA GUO with the project “Designated Ground Zeros”.
These are the 20 winners, from 14 different countries listed in alphabetical order by last name:
Ludovica Bastianini (Italy), Mark Chehodaiev (Austria), Sam Darby (USA), Enikő Dorogi (Hungary), Benito Drebing (Germany), Beihua Guo (USA), Peter Hauser (Switzerland), Joel Jimenez (Spain), Seunggu Kim (Republic of Korea), Katarina Kolenc (Slovenia), Kush Kukreja (India), Mark Martinko (Hungary), Nicola Muirhead (Bermuda), Sophie Neumann (Austria), Vera Nowottny (Germany), Tanja Oberbramberger (Austria), Arne Piepke (Germany), Ed Sykes (United Kingdom), Joanna Tochman (Poland), Olivier Tuinier (Netherlands)
More information about the Open Call Winners 2026
We are providing the guided tours on following days:
Saturday, 28.11. at 12:00,
Sunday, 29.11. at 12:00