Fotolab Kiekie and Melkweg Expo are looking for emerging talent! Are you a starting photographer or image maker with an ambitious plan for a local and socially involved project that is situated in Amsterdam? Sign up for Follow – a personal coaching programme for beginning artists. For this special, extensive themed edition, seven image makers each receive a working budget of €2000,- and the assignment to create a new series or body of work that reflects on the Amsterdam district where they live, work, grew up, or with which they have a special bond in one way or another. For five months, they will be coached by the Melkweg Expo team, Denise Woerdman (Fotolab Kiekie) and various external experts from the photography field. The result of this process will be presented in mid-2023 in the exhibition space of the Melkweg and bundled in a special edition Kiekie-city newspaper. 
 

FOR WHOM

Follow is intended as a learning trajectory for beginning photographers

• You graduated less than five years ago.

• As a starting autodidact you are professionally engaged with photography.

• Your project reflects on or captures today’s society, with in particular your own birthplace, living- or working environment/neighborhood (in Amsterdam). We’re looking for projects that engage with the city of Amsterdam, the society we live in, people or address a social topic. 

• You have strong affinity with the city of Amsterdam; you either come from Amsterdam, live and/or work here.
   

WHAT

We are looking for small, personal projects and stories that take place close to home - in or around your own birth, living and/or workplace in Amsterdam. The coronavirus pandemic has forced us all to literally and figuratively turn more inward and look for subjects closer to home. And even though the world has luckily opened up more recently, it may have altered our perceptions and the ways we look at the world and our close surroundings for good. Perhaps you have started to look at your own neighbors, family or friends differently in recent years. Maybe you've learned something about a social problem in your neighborhood that you didn't know about before. We are looking for projects that have made you perceive your environment with different eyes - or through a different lens - and that together visually map our capital in an unprecedented way.


SUBMIT

Participants can submit their project up to and including 11 December 2022 by sending an email to expo@melkweg.nl containing:

• A folder with photos of the project (idea)

• Plan of action, motivation and artist statement or substantive project description (max. 1 A4)

• A document containing your contact details and, if applicable, education and graduation year
  
   

JURY

Seven photographers will be selected from the submitted proposals. There will be no further correspondence about the selection process and the results.

Follow ‘22/’23 is an initiative of Fotolab Kiekie and Melkweg Expo, and made possible by the Mondriaan Fund.  



Image: Installation shot Sabine van Wechem, Follow 2018 candidate.