APPLICATIONS ARE CLOSED.
AFMP II — ANNUAL FOTOFILMIC MENTORING PROGRAM
MAY 2024/APRIL 2025
Applications are closed.
MENTORS: ELISA MEDDE | STACY KRANITZ | CHRISTIAN PATTERSON
We couldn’t be more grateful to leading photography editor and curator Elisa Medde – for 13 years the mastermind behind Foam Magazine’s rise to excellence – who will be returning as a core mentor. As an influential shaper of photographic culture, Elisa will lend her deep knowledge of contemporary practice to guiding the participants’ projects from early development stages and into successful completion, challenging them each step of the way to find their most innovative, ambitious voice and form possible.
Joining her in doing so, we are thrilled to welcome acclaimed documentary photographer and Guggenheim fellow (2020) Stacy Kranitz as a core mentor of this second edition! Stacy’s groundbreaking work “As It Was Give(n) To Me” (published as a monograph in 2022 with Twin Palms) has placed her at the forefront of a new generation of artists rethinking the documentary tradition, and embracing the inherent limitations and flaws of photographic representation as a crucial component of contemporary storytelling. As such, Stacy will be a most ideal mentor to develop long-form projects that can also be reflective of these critical cracks in the photographer’s traditional power position.
Longtime FotoFilmic collaborator and award-winning book artist Christian Patterson will join the core mentoring team during the second half of the program (November 2024 – April 2025) to spearhead the concept and design of the final AFMP II exhibition and its accompanying catalog publication. Bridging the gap between the last development stage of the participants’ projects, their final edited form, and an ambitious multi-format presentation is a task we know Christian will acquit himself with amazingly well thanks to his unique creative flair, making both the exhibition and catalog standout in a photo world that can feel a bit crowded at times given the sheer amount of work coming out every year.
MENTOR BIOGRAPHIES
ELISA MEDDE
Elisa Medde is a photography editor, curator and writer. With a background in History of Art, Iconology and Photographic Studies, she worked for various cultural institutions, publishing houses and non-profit organisations as project and research co-ordinator as well as independent curator and editor. Her academic research reflects on the relations between image and power, particularly in the context of contemporary photography. She served as juror for many prizes, including the Luma Rencontres Book Award, Copenhagen Photo Festival, Premio Celeste and Lens Culture. She has been nominator for the Mack First Book Award, Prix Elysée, MAST Foundation for Photography Grant and Leica Oskar Barnack award amongst others. From 2012 to 2023, she was the Managing Editor of Foam Magazine.
@elsmdd
STACY KRANITZ
Stacy Kranitz was born in Kentucky and currently lives in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Tennessee. She is a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow. Her work was shortlisted for the Louis Roederer Discovery Award (2019). She has presented solo exhibitions of her photographs at the Diffusion Festival of Photography in Cardiff, Wales (2015), the Rencontres d’Arles in Arles, France, the Cortona on the Move festival in Cortona, Italy (2022) and the Tennessee Triennial (2023) Her photographs are in several public collections including the Harvard Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Art, Houston, and Duke Universities, Archive of Documentary Arts She works as an assignment photographer for publications including Time, National Geographic, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, the Atlantic and Mother Jones. Her first monograph, As it Was Give(n) to Me, was published by Twin Palms in 2022. It was shortlisted for a Paris Photo – Aperture First Photobook Award.
www.stacykranitz.com
@stacykranitz
CHRISTIAN PATTERSON
Christian was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin and lives in New York City. His conceptually grounded, narratively driven, visually layered work has been described as novelistic, subjective documentary of the historical past, and often deals with themes of the archive, authorship, memory, place and time. Photography is consistently the heart of Patterson’s work, which also includes drawings, paintings, objects, video and sound. He is the author of three books, including the critically-acclaimed, award-winning Redheaded Peckerwood (2011, Recontres d’Arles Author Book Award) and Bottom of the Lake (2015). He is currently completing his largest project to date, Gong Co. Patterson is a Guggenheim Fellow (2013) and winner of the Grand Prix Images Vevey (2015). His work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and J. Paul Getty Museum among others. He has lectured, mentored and taught widely. He is represented by Rose Gallery, Santa Monica, USA and Robert Morat Galerie, Berlin, Germany.
christianpatterson.com
@christian.patterson
VISION
Purpose-built for photographers at crucial crossroads in their practices and careers, AFMP II will offer a one-of-a-kind, in-depth, year-long framework to emerge their true artistic voices, develop their strongest body of work to date, and through high-end final presentation, publication and international diffusion find a platform to reshape their photographic future.
STRUCTURE
The program includes two intensive physical retreats with the mentors, the first in May on beautiful Bowen Island, BC (where the FotoFilmic Space is located), and the second one in November in Paris, France, where two additional guest reviewers (tba) join in for one day to contribute outside feedback on all the projects. Participants also attend the Paris Photo fair, and many other prime photographic events taking place there around the same time. A robust online schedule (43 hours total) complements the retreats with a multitude of group and individual monthly meetings disseminated throughout the year. See full schedule details below!
OUTCOME
The goal for each participant is to develop their most ambitious, meaningful body of work yet with guidance from the mentors every step of the way. This results in a profound reshaping of their practices as they successfully connect with their true artistic ethos and purpose, and lay the foundation to keep growing through future projects. This AFMP edition culminates in 2 feature gallery exhibitions on Bowen Island (Summer 2025) and in Paris (late Fall 2025), accompanied by a printed catalog that we distribute generously through the FotoFilmic network to prominent editors, publishers, curators, writers and programmers of contemporary photographic culture around the world (North America, Europe, and Asia). This guarantees a multitude of long lasting connections with influential figures of the photo world, built from the start to evolve into concrete future opportunities for work, collaboration, publication, and friendship.
BOWEN ISLAND
RETREAT
MAY 13-18, 2024
YEAR-LONG SCHEDULE
SPRING 2024
In-person Bowen Island retreat with Stacy Kranitz & Elisa Medde (2 days 1/2 with each mentor): May 13–18, 2024 | Bowen Island, BC, Canada
FALL 2024
1 group session with Stacy Kranitz (online/6h)
1 private meeting with Stacy Kranitz (online/1 hour per student)
1 group session with Elisa Medde (online/6h)
1 private meeting with Elisa Medde (online/1 hour per student)
In-person Paris retreat with Elisa Medde, Stacy Kranitz (day 1, 2 & 3) + Christian Patterson (day 2) + 2 guest reviewers (day 3): November 3–5, 2024 | Paris, France
WINTER 2025
1 group session with Stacy Kranitz (online/6h)
1 private meeting with Stacy Kranitz (online/1 hour per student)
1 group session with Elisa Medde (online/6h)
1 private meeting with Elisa Medde (online/1 hour per student)
1 group session with Christian Patterson (online/6h)
1 private meeting with Christian Patterson (online/1 hour per student)
SPRING 2025
1 group session with Christian Patterson (online/4h)
1 final presentation group session with Stacy Kranitz, Elisa Medde & Christian Patterson (online/4h)