PhotoVogue X AD Middle East Invites MENA Creatives and Diaspora Artists To Submit Their Work

MENA Panorama is PhotoVogue’s regional initiative to champion the plurality of voices from MENA, moving beyond monolithic narratives to showcase the region’s complexity, resilience, and diverse visual languages.

• How to Submit
• Who We’re Looking For
• Eligibility & Submission Period
• What to Submit
• Grants & Opportunities
• Recognition & Exposure

Mous Lamrabat

Myriam Boulos

PhotoVogue believes that representation matters. Images do not simply reflect reality; they shape how we see the world and one another. They construct narratives, define visibility, and influence the ways we relate to each other. For this reason, creating space for a plurality of voices and perspectives has always been central to our mission.

Following the Italian Panorama, Latin American Panorama, and East and Southeast Asian Panorama, PhotoVogue is launching a new regional open call dedicated to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

At a time when many parts of the MENA region are experiencing conflict, instability, and profound social transformation, it feels especially important to create space for artists. Not to simplify or overlook these realities, but to recognise that image-making and storytelling remain essential. They allow for nuance, for complexity, and for forms of connection that can bring people together across distance, difference, and difficulty.

Rehab Eldalil

This open call invites photographers and videographers to submit work across all genres, including fashion, documentary, conceptual, and experimental practices. Rather than proposing a single narrative, it seeks to embrace the multiplicity of visual languages and lived experiences across the region.

MENA is not a monolithic space; it is shaped by a wide range of cultures, histories, and social realities, as well as by ongoing transformations and forms of resilience. For this reason, this open call does not aim to define the region, but to create a platform where artists can represent themselves, their communities, and their environments on their own terms.

Ismail Zaidy

Myriam Boulos

The competition is particularly focused on works that reflect the diversity of lived experience, whether through intimate storytelling, explorations of identity and belonging, engagements with fashion and visual culture, or reflections on social, political, and environmental realities. At the same time, the open call welcomes practices that move beyond representation, embracing experimentation, abstraction and new visual forms.

Khashayar Javanmardi

We invite photographers and video makers from Middle East and North Africa (MENA), as well as those from the diaspora who maintain a meaningful connection to the region.

Across all genres, from fashion to documentary, portraiture, fine art, and beyond, we are looking for work that reflects the richness, complexity, and plurality of experiences across the region, as well as practices that push visual language in new and unexpected directions.

• Submissions are free and open on Picter from May 21st, 2026, to September 24th, 2026 (closing at 11:59 PM CET).
• The open call is open to all artists aged 18 and above.
• If you have previously applied to a PhotoVogue Open Call, we encourage you to submit a new project.

• A series of up to 15 images, or a combination of images and video, in the case of multimedia projects

and/or

• A 60-second video trailer

M'hammed Kilito

A total of $8,000 in grants will be awarded to three artists whose work demonstrates a powerful and necessary engagement with image-making today:

• $4,500 – Outstanding Vision Grant

For an artist whose work expands creative boundaries and proposes new visual possibilities

• $2,000 – Vision Grant

For an artist with a distinctive perspective and a strong visual voice

• $1,500 – Rising Voice Grant

For an emerging artist whose work demonstrates originality and potential

Mous Lamrabat

Selected artists' work will:

• Be featured at the 2027 edition of the PhotoVogue Festival, offering an international platform for visibility, exchange, and dialogue
• Have the opportunity to be published across Condé Nast titles in the region, including Vogue Arabia, GQ Middle East, AD Middle East, and Condé Nast Traveller Middle East
• Be invited to participate in the next PhotoVogue Virtual Portfolio Reviews

Omar Khaleel

Mariam El Gendy

The international jury will be announced at a later stage, together with additional opportunities connected to the open call.

PhotoVogue is a global Condé Nast initiative dedicated to supporting artists and shaping a more conscious visual culture. Through its network of 32 markets and partners, it offers opportunities for publication, commissioning, exhibitions, and public programming.

Its mission is to champion talent, foster diversity, and promote visual literacy, contributing to a more just, ethical, and inclusive image-making landscape. Through both global and regional open calls, PhotoVogue continues to discover and amplify voices across geographies and communities.