AFMP III: TRAVELING ANNUAL FOTOFILMIC MENTORING PROGRAM (BOWEN ISLAND + PARIS)

AFMP III: ANNUAL FOTOFILMIC MENTORING PROGRAM (MAY 2025 – APRIL 2026)

REGISTRATIONS ARE CLOSED.

VISION


Purpose-built for photographers at crucial crossroads in their artistic development and forming careers, AFMP III will offer a small group of practitioners a robust and proven, in-depth, year-long mentoring framework to materialize their fullest potential through the creation of their most ambitious bodies of work to date, and through combined final gallery presentations and an accompanying catalog publication with broad international diffusion receive a unique community platform to secure successful photographic futures.

STRUCTURE


The AFMP III program will revolve around two intensive physical retreats with the core mentors: the first one in May (2025) on beautiful Bowen Island, BC at the FotoFilmic Space; and the second one in November (2025) in Paris, France, where two additional guest reviewers* (tba) join in to contribute fresh outside feedback on all developing projects midway through the program. Participants also receive a day pass to attend the Paris Photo fair, the largest international art fair dedicated to the photographic medium, and get the chance to tour the countless other prime photographic events taking place in Paris during that special photography week.

In addition to the in-person retreats, a comprehensive, well structured online schedule (nearly 50 hours total) comprising a multitude of both group and individual monthly meetings with the core mentors and select guest contributors facilitates continued conversations and ensures constant input and progress the rest of the year (fall 2025, and Spring 2026). See the full schedule details below!

* Past guest reviewers have included: Lucy Conticello (M Le Monde Magazine Director of Photography), Carolyn Drake, Katy Hundertmark (Foam Magazine Managing Editor), Mimi Plumb, and Clementine Schneidermann.

OUTCOMES


With tailored guidance from the core mentors and their collaborators every step of the way, the goal for each participant will be to conceive and develop a new significant body of work to represent them ambitiously for years to come. The work will embody meaningful commentary on our contemporary moment and reality, speak to the world’s state of affairs and its pressing issues, and as such remain foundational to their artistic identity on the international photography scene for the foreseable future. Acting as their true passport for opportunity and growth as professional photographic artists, the creation of their AFMP III work will also drive a profound reshaping of the participants’ practices as they successfully connect to their true artistic ethos and purpose, and build the foundation and ability to execute equally ambitious future projects.

This third AFMP edition will culminate in 2 featured gallery exhibitions on Bowen Island (Summer 2025) and in Paris (late Fall 2025), accompanied by an original printed catalog spearheaded by renowned book artist and AFMP III mentor Christian Patterson to be distributed generously throughout the FotoFilmic network to prominent editors, publishers, curators, writers and programmers of contemporary photographic culture around the world (North America, Europe, and Asia). The exhibitions and publication will help forge a multitude of 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.

MENTORS: ELISA MEDDE | STACY KRANITZ | CHRISTIAN PATTERSON


Leading photography editor and curator Elisa Medde – for 13 years the mastermind behind Foam Magazine‘s rise to worldwide acclaim – has been instrumental to the existence of the AFMP program since its initial launch in 2023. We are ever so grateful and excited that she is staying on as core mentor for this third edition! As a most influential shaper of photographic culture today, 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 emerge their most innovative and ambitious voice possible.

Joining her in doing so, we are thrilled to also welcome back acclaimed documentary photographer and Guggenheim fellow (2020) Stacy Kranitz as core mentor for this third edition! Stacy already contributed her invaluable experience and limitless talent to the second AFMP edition, which helped drive all the projects created by its 11 participants into strong personal ones also able to address global aspects of society.

Stacy’s groundbreaking work “As It Was Give(n) To Me” (published as a monograph in 2022 with Twin Palms) 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 also join the core AFMP III mentoring team during the second half of the program (November 2025 – April 2026) to spearhead the concept and design of the final exhibitions 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, meticulous and perceptive creative flair. His latest book “Gong Co.“, a decade in the making masterpiece, was officially released just this past November in Paris following the AFMP II retreat.

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 four books, including the critically-acclaimed, award-winning Redheaded Peckerwood (2011, Recontres d’Arles Author Book Award), Bottom of the Lake (2015) and Gong Co (2024). 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

AFMP III YEAR-LONG SCHEDULE SUMMARY


SPRING 2025
In-person Bowen Island retreat with Stacy Kranitz & Elisa Medde (2 days 1/2 with each mentor):
May 5-10, 2025 | Bowen Island, BC, Canada

 

FALL 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)
In-person Paris retreat with Elisa Medde, Stacy Kranitz (day 1, 2 & 3) and Christian Patterson (day 3) + 2 guest reviewers (day 2): November 9-11, 2025 | Paris, France

 

WINTER 2026
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 2026
1 group session with Christian Patterson (online/4h)
Final AFMP III projects presentation group session with Stacy Kranitz, Elisa Medde & Christian Patterson (online/4h)

 

SUMMER 2026*
AFMP III inaugural group exhibition (FotoFilmic Space, Bowen Island/Vancouver, BC)
AFMP III catalog print publication release & mailing


FALL 2026*
AFMP III group exhibition remount, Paris, France 


* participants are not required to attend exhibition openings in person