PHOTOARTDOC 2026
contest results
CLOSED NOMINATION
The closed category featured projects by Belarusian photographers who took part in the PhotoArtDoc 2026 educational and mentoring program. Over the course of several months, the photographers worked in three mentoring groups under the guidance of Siarhei Hudzilin, Katerina Kouzmitcheva and Tatyana Tkacheva — photographers with many years’ experience in documentary and project-based photography.
The program resulted in projects exploring a wide range of aspects of Belarusian life—including issues of memory, identity, everyday life, and personal and collective experiences. Some of these projects were completed as part of the program, while others continue to evolve as long-term research initiatives and were presented to the jury at their current stage of development.
Following the mentorship program, participants presented 21 photo projects. A jury of Belarusian curators, artists, and contemporary art researchers shortlisted eight projects for the closed category (some authors are represented under pseudonyms): Innokentij K., Jana Nizovtseva, Ales Pachynak, Alexandra Se Glück, Liudmila Slivinskaya, Alina Tamilina, Palina Turko, and Alexey Zhdanovich.
After a rich discussion, the jury selected two winners in the closed nomination without any ranking:
Hands Are Freezing
/ Author Jana Nizovtseva
(Belarus / Poland)
The project explores how memory is preserved after a loss, when physical presence and traditional farewell rituals are no longer possible. Using photography, archival documents, digital fragments, and collage, the project creates an evolving archive in which absence itself becomes the material, and memory is viewed as a continuous process of reconstruction.
Stolbtsy: An Anomalous Tourist Guide
/ Author Palina Turko
(Belarus / Poland)
Blending documentary photography with a fictional narrative, Stolbtsy: An Anomalous Tourist Guide explores how memory reshapes our perception of place. Through the imagined Institute of Spatial Stability, an ordinary Belarusian town is transformed into a space where nostalgia, personal history, and constructed realities coexist.
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PHOTOARTDOC 2026
contest results
OPEN NOMINATION
Results of the contest in the open nomination PhotoArtDoc 2026.
Topic -Transformation / State of Transition.
This year, authors from 30 countries participated in the open nomination. The jury selected three winning projects, each offering a different approach to understanding transformation — through personal experience, questions of identity, and the search for new forms of visual language.
The winners of the open nomination were determined by the international jury: Tatsiana Chypsanava (Belarus / New Zealand), Michael Grieve (Germany / Greece), Tadas Kazakevicius (Lithuania), Adam Mazur (Poland), Katerуna Radchenko Ukraine.
В shortlist of the nomination 10 projects were chosen.
As a result of the multi-selection process, voting, and discussions, the jury members identified three top projects in the nomination without ranking them.
● "Sorry, something went wrong" / Evgenii Garkusha (Ukraine / Spain)
● CACNER / Palina Turko Belarus
● "Solar Recordings of Phone Calls with Family, Friends and Scammers" / Bart Urbanski (Poland / Scotland)
The project «Inevitable Torment of Desire» received special mention from the jury members.» Marie-Denise Dessimoz (Greece / Switzerland).
The PhotoArtDoc 2026 jury noted the diversity of photographic approaches presented in the open category and the different ways in which the authors approach the theme of transformation—through personal experience, social contexts, memory, and formal strategies.
The jury recognized projects in which form does not illustrate an idea, but is part of its manifestation—through work with time, evidence, image, and fragments of personal and collective experience.
The final selection reflects the coexistence of various photographic practices and approaches to contemporary affairs—from documentary observation to more conceptual and artistic approaches. It is this diversity, according to the jury, that allows us to discuss transformation as a complex and multilayered state, rather than a single, fixed narrative.
Congratulations to the winners and thanks to all authors who participated in the PhotoArtDoc 2026 open nomination!
The best projects in the open nomination
Sorry, something went wrong
/ Author Evgenii Garkusha
(Ukraine / Spain)
A project about the disintegration of identity and the loss of home caused by the Russian occupation of Ukrainian territories, war, and forced adaptation, through which personal and family memory, the experience of the annexation of Crimea, and subsequent losses become part of a system in which people gradually lose their integrity and right to self-determination.
● CACNER /
/ Author Palina Turko
Belarus
Palina Turko's project chronicles the life of a family confronted with the mother's diagnosis of brain cancer. Through a combination of documentary photography and hand-crafted imagery, the author explores not the disease itself, but the relationships, emotional connections, and internal transformations experienced by three close individuals—mother, daughter, and younger sister.
Solar Recordings of Phone Calls with Family, Friends and Scammers
/ Author Bart Urbanski
(Poland / Scotland)
The project is based on an unusual photographic method: the length of the exposure is determined by the duration of a telephone conversation, and the movement of the sun becomes a visual trace of human communication. The work explores connection, distance, and time, transforming everyday conversations into a material archive of relationships, memory, and absence.
Jury’s Honorable Mention
The Inevitable Anguish of Desire
/ Author Maria Denise Dessimoz
(Greece / Switzerland)
A personal, reflective project about navigating complex emotional states, finding inner support, and the healing process. Using photography as a space for dialogue with her own subconscious, the author creates a visual diary in which pain gradually transforms into acceptance and light.
