Odesa Photo Days 2020

Odesa Photo Days International Festival 2020 will be held from April 23 to 26 in Odesa, Ukraine. The theme of the sixth festival is «Who Is Next To You». By March 1st, 2020, a series of works are accepted in the framework of an open call for participation in the main exhibition of the festival.

Concept

How often do we pay attention to the people around us? What do we know about our sexual partners, people living under the same roof with us, our children, our friends, or strangers that we run into in a supermarket or on a bus? Entertaining illusions that we know how people in the neighboring countries live, we only know, in fact, that what hits the news. What is more, sometimes we cannot name the bordering states, and different tastes and opinions still take us aback. Finally, finding ourselves near OTHERS who hold different opinions than we do, we feel discomfort and aggression rather than willingness to listen to them and to understand them.

The contemporary world is open thanks to the Internet—and closed because of our social interaction bubbles. The information flow is massive—and, at the same time, controlled and limited in every given country. Smartphone apps help us meet new people—but meeting them, we get embarrassed, having no idea how to spend more than half an hour in their company. We call on you to turn your attention to people around you, to try to understand the OTHER, to learn about people who are geographically distant but live in the same hemisphere as you do. We would like to see and show you stories about other, unfamiliar traditions, values, and passions. This will help us understand what unites all of us—so different from each other—and whether it unites us at all.

The visual design used the work by Ukrainian artist Anastasiia Starko.

The deadline for accepting applications is March 1, 2020.
The results will be announced in the end of March 2020.