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Photo Contest FU Berlin supported by Kulturprojekte Berlin
Re:Touch. Expanded Surfaces in Smartphone Photography

We would like to thank the diverse submissions to the Re:Touch. Expanded Surfaces in Smartphone Photography photo competition. In over 270 submissions, artists from all over the world critically examined digital smartphone photography, the process of digital image processing and its impact on society and (virtual) realities. The expert jury, consisting of Anna Ehrenstein, Lotte Reimann, Sarah Strassmann, Roc Herms and Wolfgang Ullrich, selected 3 winners and 5 special mentions. The first place was endowed with 1.500€, the second place with 700€ and the third place with 300€. All information about the winners and special mentions can be found on the website re-touch-photocontest.com.

The Winners

1st Place: “Character Coding” by Gabriella Achadinha

The work “Character Coding” by Gabriella Achadinha stood out to the jury because it deals accurately and formally aesthetically with the current usage of smartphone photography in the context of the internet and social media. Within a single long strip of images, the artist arranges diverse visual material into a collage and thus already determines the mode of reception: scrolling is encouraged. Screenshots of smartphone lock screens or WhatsApp conversations are superimposed with text and digital drawings. Crudely cut-out found images from the web are juxtaposed with personal photographs, fragments of advertisements appear, interrupted by news headlines and Google search entries. The work employs various methods of citing, copying, and repeating, symptomatic of our digital sharing culture in both the artistic and pop cultural spheres. Thematically, “Character Coding” deals with female stereotypes, toxic masculinity, and the harassment of individuals perceived as female in online spaces. The work therefore also questions so-called internet phenomena such as hate speech and comments, as well as the current state of net feminism and the male gaze in general.

2nd Place: “Sedimentary Clouds” by Maryam Ghasemi

Maryam Ghasemi’s series “Sedimentary Clouds” impressed the jury in its simple and effective use of glitching and its generative potential. Her works show assembled collages of fragmented interiors. They deal with the condition of being part of the Iranian diaspora and the ubiquitous screen-glitch that lays the foundation of familial and relational love for everybody loving long distance in the 21st century. In assembling these, at first gaze, bland and fragmented interiors through screenshots of video calls, Ghasemi emphasizes the mundanity and the deexeptionalization of displacement. Displacement is an increasingly ubiquitous experience – hyperobjects like global warming and fossil resource scarcity will ever increase this condition throughout the upcoming nomad century. While movement worldwide is still framed as exceptional, displacement emerging from crisis after crisis—environmental disasters to political instability, economic insecurity to outright war, global pandemic to the uneven effects of climate catastrophe—it is clear that, just as “crisis” is becoming the norm, so too is displacement. Maryam Ghasemi’s works have given a visual language to this and monumentalize the poetics of polarity – the simultaneous presence and absence through online connections – without tapping into pathetic self-exotification or auto-orientalism. Three months into the anti-government protests after the murder of Mahsa Amini and 40 years into the dictatorship in Iran, Ghasemi’s work avoids sensationalism and instead shows the subtleties and ordinariness of displacement in a world of ongoing crises.

3rd Place: “The Wooden Beaver Archive” by Michael Borowski

The series “The Wooden Beaver Archive” by US artist Michael Borowski convinced the jury as an unusual as well as subtle and formally independent contribution to dealing with imaging AI programmes. Borowski used prompts to generate images of bathhouses, saunas and spas that were built in the USA in the late 19th century in places with mineral springs. These facilities offered not least the opportunity to act out (unaccepted) homoerotic or queer desire. The images generated by the AI programme often show people in fragmented or distorted form, sometimes individual body parts cannot be clearly assigned. But these image errors provide their own aesthetic quality, and in this case it looks as if several people are embracing or literally intertwining with each other. Borowski produced negatives of these digital images, which then became the basis for salt prints. This is a photographic process from the early days of photography – popular precisely at the time when those bathhouses were also booming. Borowski has thus recreated historical images that do not exist in this form, in fact he has created a fictitious archive. With salt printing, he has chosen a process which, if not used perfectly, also results in distortions of the motifs. In this way, he has historicised the effects of the AI as well.

Special Mentions:

  • “My Head is Too Heavy” by Amy Giese
  • “2019-2022” by Deep Pool
  • “Flowers in a Field of Terror” by Faylita Hicks
  • “Invisible Ink” by Pat Blocher
  • “Rooted Resurgence” by Vanessa A. Opoku

This is a project of the Seminar of Culture and Media Management at Freie Universität Berlin with the support of Kulturprojekte Berlin.

Photo Contest FU Berlin supported by Kulturprojekte Berlin
Re:Touch. Expanded Surfaces in Smartphone Photography

The deadline for submitting photographs to the Open Call Re:Touch. Expanded Surfaces in Smartphone Photography is on the 6 March 2023 at 23:59 CET. It takes place on the occasion of EMOP Berlin – European Month of Photography 2023 and in cooperation with Kulturprojekte Berlin. With this open call under the theme Re:Touch, we offer amateur and professional photographers the opportunity to engage critically or artistically with digital smartphone photography, the process of digital image processing and its effects on society and (virtual) realities. There is a prize money of €1,500 for the first winner, €700 for the second winner and €300 for third winner. The complete call as well as all terms and conditions can be found on the website re-touch-photocontest.com.

Our Jury Members

Shortly after the publication of the Re:Touch Open Call, the jury for the contest has been selected. We are pleased to present five renowned personalities from the culture and art scene as our jury members.

Anna Ehrenstein lives between Berlin, Tirana and the cloud and works in various mediums in artistic or curatorial production, examining how technology and digital-material culture reshape power relations. Anna Ehrenstein studied photography and media art in Germany and attended curatorial courses in Valetta, ML and Lagos, NG. In 2022 she received the INITIAL scholarship for artistic mediation, in 2021 the Research Scholarship of the Senate Department for Culture and Europe, Berlin and in 2020 the C/O Berlin Talent Award 2020 for “New Documentary Strategies” with her work Tools for Conviviality. (https://annaehrenstein.com/)

Lotte Reimann (🌵 *she/her) is an artist, researcher and teacher, based in Berlin. She works on conceptual photographic narratives about corporeality that subvert the colonial historical concept of the fetish—the view on the “others”. Lotte received the Krupp award “Contemporary German Photography” in 2022, the C.o.C.A. Foundation Art Prize in 2016 and was a Jan van Eyck Academie fellow in Maastricht in 2019. (https://www.lottereimann.de/)

Wolfgang Ullrich, born in 1967, lives as a cultural scientist and freelance author in Leipzig. From 2006 to 2015 he was a professor of art science and media theory at the University of Arts and Design Karlsruhe. His main research and publication topics involve the history and critique of the concept of art, sociological image phenomena and consumer theory. Since 2019 he is a co-editor of the book series “Digitale Bildkulturen“. Other recent book publications include: “Selfies. Die Rückkehr des öffentlichen Lebens”, Berlin 2019, “Feindbild werden. Ein Bericht”, Berlin 2020 and “Die Kunst nach dem Ende ihrer Autonomie”, Berlin 2022 (www.ideenfreiheit.de)

Roc Herms shows his passion in Internet, video games and parallel realities, and the need to take a step further in photographic practices. “Postcards From Home” and “<YO> <YO> <YO>”, his two long term projects published in book form, try to shed some light on the life we live inside the computer. “Hacer Pantallazo” is an intimate diary made with screenshots, a capture process that he ends up understanding as the ultimate step on photography’s digitalisation. His work has been exhibited at Les rencontres d’Arles (France), Fotomuseum Winterthur (Switzerland), CCCB (Barcelona) among others. (https://www.rocherms.com/)

Sarah Straßmann is an artist and researcher based in Berlin. In addition, she has been teaching as a research associate for Photography and Visual Culture at the University of Hildesheim since 2019. Her works have been exhibited internationally, most recently in 2022 in the Bundeskunsthalle Bonn or in the Ruhr Museum Essen. She currently receives the scholarship for “Photography and Media Art 2023” from the state of Kärnten/ Austria. One focus of her works is on intermedial, photography-based research projects that deal with the use of smartphone photography in the context of the internet and social media. (sarah-strassmann-fotografie.de)

This is a project of the Seminar of Culture and Media Management at Freie Universität Berlin with the support of Kulturprojekte Berlin.

Photo Contest FU Berlin supported by Kulturprojekte Berlin
Re:Touch. Expanded Surfaces in Smartphone Photography

On the occasion of the EMOP Berlin – European Month of Photography 2023 and our cooperation with Kulturprojekte Berlin, we invite professional and amateur photographers to submit images that explore the expanded surfaces of digital photographic images. Although digital images on screens and smartphones play a significant role in our everyday social lives, media and networks, they are still often underestimated as photographic practices with potential for critical agency and aesthetics.

With this open call under the theme Re:Touch, we want to offer participating photographers the opportunity to engage critically and artistically with digital smartphone photography, the process of digital image processing and its effects on society and (virtual) realities. We are looking for photographs that use the smartphone as a starting point for a Re:Touch, the haptic politics of image surfaces. The technique can include but is not limited to selfies, snapshots, screenshots or photogrammetry. Your approach may be a personal subject, a critical intervention or an experimental digital photographic practice to overcome new and old boundaries of connectivity.

Please submit one digital image or a series of up to five digital images on the theme of Re:Touch. There is a prize money of 1.500 € for the first, 700 € for the second and 300 € for the third place. In addition, the works of the winners, as well as Special Mentions will be published online. The deadline for entries is 06 March 2023 at 23:59 CET. Entries can be submitted via an online form on the website. Participants must be at least 18 years old. The complete call as well as all terms and conditions can be found on the website re-touch-photocontest.com.

This is a project of the Seminar of Culture and Media Management at Freie Universität Berlin with the support of Kulturprojekte Berlin.