PhotoArtDoc Festival announces results of the 2026 open nomination, dedicated to the topic “Transformation / Transition as a state (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.
Best projects in the open nomination
Palina Turko (Belarus) ● CACNER /
Evgeniy Garkusha (Ukraine / Spain) - "Sorry, something went wrong" / пошло не так»
Bart Urbanski (Poland/Scotland) - project «Sun Recorded Phone Calls with Family, Friends, and Scammers»
Honorable mention from the jury
Maria-Denise Dessimoz (Greece / Switzerland) - project «The Inevitable Anguish of Desire» (18+)
PhotoArtDoc 2026 Jury
The winners of the open nomination were determined by the international jury:
Tatsiana Chypsanava (New Zealand) — documentary photographer, winner of the 2025 World Press Photo Award, winner of PhotoArtDoc 2024
Michael Grieve (Germany / Greece) — photographer, writer, teacher, publisher, founder and director of Werkstatt and ArtFotoMode
Tadas Kazakevicius (Lithuania) — documentary and editorial photographer, winner of the World Press Photo, Leica Oskar Barnack Award, ZEISS and LensCulture, founder of the Vilnius House of Photography
Adam Mazur (Poland) — art critic, art historian, American studies scholar, and curator of numerous group and solo exhibitions of Polish and international artists.
Kateryna Radchenko (Ukraine) — founder of Odessa Photo Days, curator, artist, photography researcher. Magnum Foundation Fellow (2025), World Press Photo jury member (2023)
Congratulations to the winners and thanks to all authors who participated in the PhotoArtDoc 2026 open nomination!