Trigger

Scope of the open call

We welcome proposals by photographers and visual artists whose work engages with the Atlantic, Pacific, or Indian Ocean, including their seas, coastlines, and maritime routes.

We are particularly interested in projects that are new, ongoing, incomplete, or unfolding over time, as long as they articulate a clear conceptual and visual direction. Contributions can take many forms, including photography, film, hybrid or expanded visual practices, and experimental approaches to image-making.

Rather than conventional documentary formats, we are drawn to practices that treat photography and moving image as practices in flux,  open to experimentation, hybridity, alternative processes, and new visual grammars.

Thematic interests

We are especially interested in work that explores one or more of the following themes:

• Oceanic imaginaries: water as subject, collaborator, or guide in creative practice
• Maritime histories: archives, ship logs, colonial voyages, and their circulation in visual culture
• Deep and submerged worlds: underwater terrains, seabeds, mediated or imagined depths
• Multispecies encounters: marine life, hybrid ecologies, and more-than-human relations
• Structures and power: industry, infrastructure, extraction, military presence, tourism, and human intervention
• Futures and speculation: rising seas, climate change, and emerging oceanic imaginaries beyond dominant Western frameworks
• Mapping and counter-tracking: approaches that interrogate maritime cartographies and tracking regimes, and explore how traces at sea can be followed, reconstructed, or reimagined, in resonance with Sara Caputo’s Tracks on the Ocean (2025).

We particularly encourage proposals that engage critically with visibility, scale, mapping, technology, and knowledge production, and that situate the ocean as a contested and governed space.

Contribution & Collaboration

Selected contributors will develop their contribution in dialogue with the editorial team of TRIGGER and the guest editors, Oceanographies Collective. Together, we will shape how the work takes form within the context of the book. Contributions may take the form of visual essays, sequences, hybrid spreads, or other formats appropriate to the project and publication.

Fee

A fee between €400 and €660 (incl. VAT) will be provided, depending on the nature and scope of the proposed contribution. The fee will be discussed and agreed upon collaboratively with selected contributors.

Submission details

What to submit

Please submit a short proposal (max. 300 words), clearly tailored to this open call.
We do not ask for full portfolios.

Your proposal may include:

• A concise description of the proposed contribution
• A brief explanation of how the work relates to the ocean or maritime contexts
• A short outline of the visual and conceptual approach
• Optional: a small selection of sample images or film stills (only if relevant)

Selection

A maximum of three proposals will be selected

Proposals will be reviewed by a jury consisting of Oceanographies Collective, curators from FOMU, and the coordinating editor of TRIGGER

Timeline

• Submission deadline: Monday 23 March
• Notification: by 4 April
• First draft / visual material: due 7 May

How to submit

Please send your proposal as a single PDF to:
tom.viaene@fomu.be

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About TRIGGER

TRIGGER is a publication by FOMU – Museum of Photography Antwerp, dedicated to critical reflection on and through photography. It connects artists, writers, researchers, and practitioners, creating space for situated practices, long-term collaboration, and forms of knowledge that challenge dominant narratives.

With TRIGGER #7: Ocean, we invite image-makers to think with the ocean,  to let its currents, depths, and conditions shape new visual languages and ways of knowing.