This award is organized by Encontros da Imagem - International Photography and Visual Arts Festival that celebrate this year it’s 29th edition, which aims to award the Best Portfolio in Contemporary Photography. The photography award will be given through a Portfolio Review that offers photographers the opportunity to present their works to curators, galleries and specialized publishers, promoting their work this way. The Portfolio Review will take place in Braga, Portugal on the 12th and 13th of September 2019.

What winner receives

The EMERGENTES 2019 - International Photography Award Encontros da Imagem consists in a 5.000€ (five thousand) award and a solo exhibition for the winner in the next edition of the festival 2020. The other nine finalists will be part of a collective exhibition in the next edition of the festival in 2020.

About the organization

Encontros da Imagem, with more than thirty years of existence, is a non-profit cultural association, that promotes annually an International Photography and Visual Arts Festival in the city of Braga, Portugal. The festival celebrates classic and contemporary photography and visual arts in general by showcasing emerging and established artists. Every year Encontros da Imagem promotes an open call for the Discovery Awards, where the winners have the opportunity to exhibit their work during the festival. Encontros da Imagem also organizes an International Photography Prize - Emergentes, this prize is awarded after the Portfolio Review, which gives photographers the opportunity to show their work to an international jury, composed by commissioners, gallery owners and expert editors, thus establishing solid foundations for the promotion of their work. The festival has developed an eclectic programme. This year the theme is “What Now?”, where numerous artists emerging and established, national and international will be shown in several public and private spaces (historical and monumental buildings, museums, galleries and others). Encontros da Imagem is a cultural photographic reference in Portugal, and has reached a prominent position in the international panorama, being currently one of the oldest photography festivals in Europe.

Selection process

The selection process will be in two stages:

• 1st stage: 1st stage: Applications through Picter until the 28th of July. In this stage, maximum of 80 portfolios will be selected, these finalists will be invited to come to Braga for the portfolio review. The criteria for the selection will be originality, coherence and conceptual quality of the projects. The finalists will be announced on the 2ND of August, 2019.

• 2nd stage: In the second stage, the finalist will have to enroll and pay 120€ fee until the 15TH of August, to have access to the six individual portfolio reviews with the critics they choose, each review will be 20 minutes. The portfolio review will be held in Braga on the 12th and 13th of September. Selection of the Winner: During the portfolio review, each critic will select the best portfolio in is opinion. In a final meeting the critics team will choose the best 10 finalists portfolios, 1 winner and 9 finalists. The winner and finalists will be announced during the opening weekend, 13th to the 15th of September 2019.

Jeanne Mercier
Independent Curator, Portugal
Jeanne Mercier is a critic and curator since 2006 based between Europe and Africa. She is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Afrique in Visu, an independent platform for photographers in Africa (2006).  Today, she divides her time between Afrique in visu and curatorial projects for several festivals and exhibitions. In 2015, she was the curator of the Rencontres Internationales de la Photographie de Fez. 2017, she publishes the book "The profession of photographer in Africa, 10 years of Afrique in visu" by Clémentine de la Féronnière. 2018, she is co-curator of the exhibition " Africa is no island. June 2019, she curated the exhibition, Mythologies of resistance, Nicola Lo Calzo, Fotofestiwal 2019, Lodz, Poland.

Azu Nwagbogu
Director of Lagos Photo Festival, Nigeria
Azu Nwagbogu is the Founder and Director of African Artists’ Foundation (AAF), a non-profit organisation based in Lagos, Nigeria. Nwagbogu was recently elected as the Director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art in South Africa. Nwagbogu also serves as Founder and Director of Lagos Photo Festival, an annual international arts festival of photography held in Lagos. He is the creator of Art Base Africa, a virtual space to discover and learn about contemporary African Art.

Olivia Maria Rubio
Artistic Director of Photo España, Spain
Olivia Maria Rubio is the artistic director at La Fabrica and the director of Master Photoespaña in Photography, Theories and Artistic Projects. Before being named Artistic director at La Fabrica in 2014, she was Director of Exhibitions 2004-2013, General Curator of PHotoEspaña (PHE), Madrid´s international photography and visual arts festival, where she programmed approximately 60 exhibitions (2001-2003).

Iris Sikking
Independent Curator, Irland
Iris Sikking (1968) is an independent curator based in Amsterdam, educated as a film editor and a photo historian. As a curator, lecturer and writer, she positions herself in the overlapping field of photography and film art. In the past fifteen years, she has developed projects in close collaboration with artists, conceived thematic exhibitions, and published photo books and online projects. Last year she acted as the chief curator of the Krakow Photomonth. In 2019 she is curator of the Futures Talent exhibition at UNSEEN.

Dieter Neubert
Director of Fotobook Festival Kassel, Alemanhã
Dieter Neubert is from Kassel, Germany. He has studied visual communication at the Kassel University and is the Founder and Director of the Kassel Fotobookfestival and Founder of the Kassel Photobook and Dummy Awards. He is also the chief editor of the monographic magazine PHOTOPAPER. He edited and published several books like the Daido Moriyama anthology ON DAIDO, the artist book KASSEL MENU by Martin Parr and some volumes of the annual catalog BEST PHOTOBOOKS.

Joerg Bader
Diretor of Centre Photografique de Genève, Suiça
Born 1955 in Zurich, artist, art critic, author, publisher, teacher and exhibition curator Joerg Bader lives and works in Geneva and Belo Horizonte. Director of the Geneva Photography Centre (CPG) since 2001, Mr. Bader considers himself an artist and critic who finds visual, written, radio, editorial and curatorial forms. He has organized over 80 solo shows and around 20 thematic exhibitions.

Erik Vroons
Editor at GUP Magazine, Holanda
Erik Vroons is Editor-at-large of GUP, after having functioned as Chief Editor for this international photography magazine from 2010-2015. He is also closely involved with the production of, and the selection procedure for, the annual catalog New Dutch Photography Talent In recent years, he has initiated group exhibitions of New Dutch Photography Talent at festivals and galleries around the world.

Pablo Berastegui
Gallery owner Salut Ao Monde!, Portugal
Pablo Berástegui, has been working for the past twenty years as a cultural producer in Spain. At this moment Berástegui is the director of the documental photography project Salut ao monde! in Porto. Before this he was the director of PhotoEspaña in four editions (2003 - 2006). In 2016 he was also the director of European Capital of Culture in San Sebastián. He was also director of La noche en blanco de Madrid in four editions, and responsible for city cultural centers like Matadero Madrid and Centro Conde Duque.

Estefânia de Almeida
Galerista Adorna Corações, Portugal
Estefânia R. de Almeida is since 2003, Artistic Director of gallery Adorna Corações in Porto, she is also a member of the Month of Image in Porto. She develops a pioneer work when it comes to the propagation of the contemporary photography practices in the Portuguese context. Her curatorial approach privileges an artistic view that differs from the more classic ways of image making, she works with multidisciplinary artist. The gallery Adorna Corações is looking to showcase stablished and emerging photographers.

Nuno Centeno
Founder and Director of the gallery Nuno Centeno (1979, Porto – Portugal). Nuno Centeno belongs to the selection comity of galleries for ARCO Lisboa, he is also a consultant for the Cultural Department of the Municipality of Porto . He is also the founder and director of Artist Book Gallery (specialized gallery in dummy’s, as a unique piece); In 2016 with less than 10 career years Nuno Centeno was nominated by Artnet as one of the 10 most respected gallerists in Europe and in 2018 we won the award for best stand in the international fair Frieze in New York.

Karen McQuaid
Karen has curated exhibitions including Jim Goldberg, Open See (2009); Fiona Tan, Vox Populi, London (2012); Andy Warhol, Photographs: 1976 – 1987 (2014); Lorenzo Vitturi, Dalston Anatomy (2014) and Rosângela Rennó, Río-Montevideo(2016). She has co-curated Geraldo De Barros, What Remains (2013) with Isobel Whitelegg and Made You Look, Dandyism and Black Masculinity (2016) with Ekow Eshun. She has recently edited The New Colonists by Monica Alcazar-Duarte which is due for release in January 2018. Karen has curated external exhibitions at The Moscow House of Photography and The National Gallery of Kosovo. She regularly participates in international workshops, writes for photography publications and edits artists books. Karen also guest lectures across the UK. TPG New Talent 2019, a programme and exhibition for UK based emerging practitioners is her most recent exhibition.

Vitor Nieves
Vitor was the artistic director and curator of the festival Outono Fotografico from 2010 to 2017. In 2013 he created the Premio Galiza de Fotografía Contemporánea award which he stills coordinate. He teaches Curadoria Fotográfica in Máster de Fotografia Artística at Instituto de Produção Cultural e Imagem (IPCI) in Porto.He manages a photography books collection where he published several books such as “Don’t look at my camera” (studies about staged photography), and edited artists books. He participated in photography workshops, was jury in competitions and reviewed portfolios in international photography festivals: Paratty in Foco (Rio de Janeiro), Encontros da Imagem (Braga), Encontros de Agosto (Fortaleza) and iNstantes (Porto). Art critic specialized in photography, Vitor has curated projects in the galleries: A rede de Sargadelos (Galiza), Galería Marisa Marimón (Ourense), Galería das Salgadeiras (Lisboa), Dosmilvacas.arte (Ponferrada, León), and in public spaces: Centro Cultural Marcos Valcárcel and Museo Municipal (Ourense), Museu da Imagem (Braga), Museu da Indústria (Fortaleza), Centro Português da Fotografia (Porto), Pazo da Cultura (Pontevedra), Museo Provincial (Lugo), Afundación art center, and in every city of Galiza.

Giovanna Calvenzi
She taught for eleven years history of photography. From 1985 she has been working as picture editor for many italian magazines. In 1998 she was the artistic director of Rencontres de la Photographie in Arles and in 2014 she was artistic director of the Mois de la Photo in Paris. She teaches photo-editing and she carries on an intense research in the field of contemporary photography.

Maja Dyrehauge Gregersen
Festival director of Copenhagen Photo Festival since 2016 – the largest photo festival in Scandinavia and of the leading in Europe, presenting more than 250 international photographers and lens based artists. and 55 exhibitions distributed across Copenhagen. In total, Copenhagen Photo Festival showcases more than 55 exhibitions throughout Copenhagen and Southern Sweden, and we proudly welcome 55,000 visitors at the annual event in June.