2021

For the new edition of Blurring the Lines it is an honor and a privilege to welcome Amak Mahmoodian as our guest curator and the winners of the 2020 edition, Ragna Arndt-Maric, Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo, and Riti Sengupta. Amak Mahmoodian is a Persian artist based in Uk. Her work questions notions of identity, bridging a space between public life and private life, personal and political which draws on her experiences in the Middle East, Asia and the West. Amak’s practice explore the effects of exile on memory, dreams and subconsciousness. In 2015, she completed a practice-based doctorate in photography at the University of South Wales, having previously studied at the Art University of Tehran. Working with image, poems and archives , she has shown her work extensively and won numerous awards.

The theme of this year's edition, open to schools, is « Ethical shifts in photography ».

Beyond its unique way of making visual information, photography has become the universal medium through which image-makers raise essential questions on human ethics and responsibility. Since its invention, photography was a decisive factor in gestating and deploying a new way of observing, representing, and understanding reality and with it ourselves. For the 2021 edition, the theme « Ethical shifts in photography » aims to explore the power, the moral principles, and the responsibilities of photography in all its dimensions: the rights of privacy and publicity, cultural representation, appropriation, confidentiality, copyright, intellectual property, sustainability, ethics of wildlife, and nature photography, ethics in photojournalism, and accountability as well as the use of technology that started to challenge the landscape of ethics by doing things to photos without the viewer even being aware.

Ethics and photography are two terms that seem distant in the first instance: the first a foreshortening of philosophy, the second an activity sustained by a technological artifact. Photography can ask questions about the ethics of the world, but more likely, the world can ask questions about the ethics of photography. Faced with an overproduction of images by all means and possibilities, today more than ever is vital to distinguish what is significant and pertinent from what is purely aesthetic. This call brings to the fore the theme of the education and responsibility of seeing. To face a world where images dominate the stage, not only codes of ethics, quality standards but also critical reading and discernment skills are urgently needed.

2020

The 2020 edition of Blurring the lines was curated by Steve Bisson, Lisanne van Happen & John Fleetwood. For this edition, and among the 151 very high-quality projects coming from 38 participating photography schools worldwide, curators selected 3 winners and 33 finalists.
The theme for the 5th edition of the call is “Commitment” as the state or quality of being dedicated to a cause, activity, etc., or an engagement or obligation that restricts freedom of action. The question of photography’s commitment to real-world issues and its relationship provides significant directives for promoting a social engagement from photographers, which is changing the photographic tool.

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2019

The 2019 edition of Blurring the lines was curated by Steve Bisson & Lisanne van Happen.
For this edition, and among the 66 very high-quality projects coming from 19 participating photography schools worldwide, curators selected 3 winners and 22 finalists.
The 2019 edition of the Blurring the Lines does not betray expectations. The number of participating schools and works submitted is increasing, accordingly with the quality of the entire cultural proposal. The mission of this initiative, growing exponentially since its first edition in 2016, is to establish an area of observation, dialogue, and discussion on the subject of image-making. The diversity of schools reflects a variety of approaches to the visual medium, in a kaleidoscope of intentions and creative enthusiasm.

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Free digital version of the catalogue (PDF) ↗

2018

The 2018 edition of Blurring the lines was curated by Steve Bisson & Lisanne van Happen.
The exhibition includes 22 projects coming from graduates connected to 17 art academies in 3 different continents of the world.
The third edition stood out through participation in the FotoFever fair during the ParisPhoto opening week. Also, the European Cultural Center step in as a new partner and hosted an installation of Blurring the Lines at Palazzo Mora during the Venice Biennale.
Finally, in collaboration with Urbanautica Institute, a catalog was published for the first time.

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Free digital version of the catalogue (PDF) ↗

2017

The 2017 edition of Blurring the lines was curated by Steve Bisson & Rodrigo Orrantia.
17 projects from 9 schools have been selected to be showcased at Paris College of Art.
The call aimed to select and exhibited images that best communicate the expansion of modes of representation through photography. A change that indeed refers to the digitization and the frontiers of post-production, the contamination between different visual languages, the relationship between the availability of technology and new forms of expression. This explosion of the medium combined with an endemic proliferation of pervasive social media encourages us to reflect on the ethical consequences of image-making.

finalists

Taís de Aquino
Eline Benjaminsen
Obi Blanche
Marina Caneve
Gaby Deimeke
Milena Edelstein
Sterre Fenna van der Waals
Berglaug Petra Garðarsóttir
Bernardo Jardim Ribeiro
Díana Júlíusdóttir
Gustavo Junqueira
Jaime Huidobro
Anna Kieblesz
Carlos Krithinas
Gilleam Trapenberg
Yang Yueying

2016

The first edition of Blurring the lines was curated by Steve Bisson & François Ronsiaux.
The program involved 3 universities and led to the creation of the first exhibition at Espace F15 of Paris College of Art, which combined the projects of 3 French artists (Dominique Clerc, Pierre Folk and Patrick Rimond) with a selection of 10 graduates' works. The exhibition focused on the expansion of the photographic language as a phenomenon affecting the ways in which we understand pictures, we discuss them and share their content. The splitting border between photography and images generate alternative spaces and new modes of interaction.