We are thrilled to announce the winners of the Form Photo Award 2025. This year, the standard of work is exceptionally high, reflecting the incredible talent and creativity of contemporary photographers from around the world. Each longlisted artist brings a unique perspective, a fresh aesthetic, and thought-provoking ideas that challenge and inspire.
The Form Photo Award, supported by Scope Miami Beach 2025, Picter, Photo Basel, and Form Magazine, is dedicated to discovering emerging voices in photography. It aims to foster global dialogue, intellectual exchange, and cross-cultural solidarity within the art community. Every submission represents a new vision, a story waiting to be shared, and the longlist is a testament to the vibrancy and diversity of contemporary photography today.

This year’s shortlist demonstrates just how extraordinary the field of contemporary photography has become, and we are proud to celebrate the vision, originality, and skill of all the artists included.

When the war began, the question “How are we?” echoed across Ukraine and beyond. Over time, answering has grown unbearably difficult. The war in Ukraine is, in many ways, the first online war, where Ukrainians process thousands of images and texts daily. Most construct an imagined, multidimensional reality from fragmented reports, documentaries, and eyewitness accounts. These internal landscapes make it hard to connect with one’s own psyche, which operates in emergency mode under the weight of constant vigilance. The images in the artist’s collages, made with a 3D smartphone scanner (Polycam), reflect this complex, volumetric reality of Ukraine.

›Filmfehler‹ (›Failed Film‹) is an ongoing artistic research project centered around a collection of photographic failure from the archive of the former film factory inWolfen, Germany. Starting in the early 20th century, film and photographic materials were produced in Wolfen under the label agfa, later orwo, until the factory stopped the production after the collapse of the GDR in the 1990s. During its operation, supervisors at the factories kept a collection of mistakes and failures that were made during the production cycle. Official documents suggest that this material was collected to prevent making the same mistakes in the future, while handwritten notes by technicians foreshadow a fascination with the poetic quality of these mistakes. Parts of this collection remain in the archive of the former film factory, hitherto unseen. ›Filmfehler‹ (›Failed Film‹) is centered around fundamental questions about photographic failure, archives and their function and use in contemporary art practice. A core interest of the project is the examination of Wolfen’s “failed film” in regard to its visual potential. Using actual film material from the archive, the artist creates analog chromogenic and silver gelatin prints as physical interpretations of these mistakes.

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